Mandela, Mother Teresa, Liu Xiaobo, Médecins Sans Frontières and the Indole effect: Is there something drug resistant bacteria can tell us about our Nobel Peace Prize Laureates?

Whenever the world   is faced with a humanitarian crisis we see the rise of outstanding leaders. 

Nelson Mandela

These are altruistic individuals or small groups of committed people who have outstanding moral fibre and personal conviction; and also the ability to lead people out of crisis. Their ability to sacrifice their own well being, safety and comfort for others is what separates them from their co-sufferers.

What makes a great humanitarian leader?

Conviction, integrity, honesty, humility, empathy and compassion are some of the key traits. But the defining trait is the selfless non violent pursuit to protect those who cannot speak or take care of themselves.

 Their contribution always comes at great personal cost – Martin Luther King was assassinated; Nelson Mandela spent almost three decades in prison; Mother Teresa cared for the poor in the slums of Kolkata; Liu Xiaobo – the Nobel Laureate for 2010 was sentenced by the Chinese authorities to 11 years in prison in 2009 for dissident activities; Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF or Doctors without Borders)

Médecins Sans Frontières at refugee camp in Africa

was created in 1971 by a small group of French doctors in the aftermath of the Biafra secession, who believed that all people have the right to medical care regardless of race, religion, creed or political affiliation, and that the needs of these people outweigh respect for national borders – the members of MSF put their own lives at peril to provide medical care in places of humanitarian crisis – like natural disasters and war torn areas.

But is this ability to rise up and shield others from harm solely a rare human trait? It would appear so…but, here is an interesting research finding – Altruistic bacteria!!!

Bacterial Nobel Laureates

We are all aware of drug resistant bacteria

A different perspective on technologies that influence human behaviour

"Persuading people through technology is the next social revolution. Facebook demonstrates just how powerful it will be." -BJ Fogg

There is a lot of hype in the media about how social media technologies like mobile computing, facebook, twitter, online gaming have changed the way we live and interact.

If we look at it closely it becomes clear that it is not our behaviour that has changed, it is just that we have taken advantage of the internet to efficiently carry out our core human activities: communicating, listening, watching, learning, comparing, and contrasting.

The social media technologies so far have allowed us to do what we already do, even better and more efficiently, more often, in more places and much faster. Examples of these include smart phones (talk, browse, photograph & videos, share, blog etc); iTunes has changed the way people listen to music, study, access entertainment, read books and play; and Wikipedia allows us to share our time and effort altruistically to share information with others.

So far we have been in control of the way we use the technology. But there are very interesting developments taking place where innovators are using technology to fiddle with human behaviour with a view to changing our behaviour. Welcome to the world of persuasive technologies, technologies that could affect your freedom and change the way you choose & decide. This is very promising and at the same time opens a can of worms

Emerging technologies that influence us

Fortune magazine lists BJ Fogg as one of the 10 new gurus that you should know. BJ Fogg is the founder of the Persuasive Technologies Lab at Stanford University,

Avoiding Human Extinction: What makes our species so intelligent yet so self destructive

Stephen Hawking

“I believe that the long-term future of the human race must be in space. It will be difficult enough to avoid disaster on planet Earth in the next hundred years, let alone the next thousand, or million” – Stephen Hawking, during his interview with Big Ideas.

Ever wondered what makes us humans, as a species, so brilliant yet so self destructive.  Latest findings on human origins show that as recently as 125,000 years ago, the human race had come very close to extinction.

Chance and our cognitive and technological ability saved us from the brink of extinction. So can we cheat extinction again, and what is so different this time around?

In this blog post we look at how the human ability to communicate, think and tinker with our world has evolved, and what it means for our future.

The tyranny of the “billable hour”: how it destroys value for customers and makes life hell for professionals

If you have ever engaged someone to do work for you by the hour and found that you are getting a lot less and paying a lot more – you are not alone. This is a common experience when dealing with professionals – consultants, mechanics, builders, therapists, life coaches, accountants, lawyers … this list goes on.

Billable Hour

While the billable hour may make you feel that you are being ripped off, it can be soul destroying for some of the professionals involved too. It stifles their creativity and leads them to loathe what they do.

Beware the “certified” expert

Have you ever suspected that the expensive “certified” experts and consultants often fail to deliver? They appear to remain fixed in their views and methods (even when presented with facts contrary to their views) and seem to miss the big picture?

You are not alone in thinking so, and you could be right. In business as well as in our daily life we are assured by “certified” experts – management consultants, project managers, psychologists, life coaches etc, that they (through the methods they use) have the answers to our problems. The focus on the term “certified” is because its use signals someone who is an expert, which could be misleading. So how do you decide which kind of expert to use?

A part of the answer can be found in the way we humans behave and organise ourselves.

The All Assuring Expert

What skills can be certified: Different types of jobs need different types of experts

Most of these experts see themselves as a “knowledge worker,” using their mental skills rather than their labour to produce goods and services. Does this mean that all the “knowledge workers” are equal? 

 No, there are two kinds of jobs – algorithmic and heuristic, and they need different kinds of skills. Algorithmic jobs are made up of tasks in which you follow a set of established instructions down a single pathway to one conclusion.  Heuristic jobs are instead made of tasks that involve trial and error and discovering the solution on your own. 

Light Blue Collar Workers

Algorithmic jobs are repetitive and lend themselves to frameworks and methods that can be taught, assessed and certified. These are what we can term as the “Light Blue Collar” workers. They turn out similar and mostly the same “service widgets” day after day.  Examples of such widgets

Missing the Elephant in the Room: How current social events can mislead us?

“To have the worst soccer team at the World Cup was almost unbearable. To also have the most stupid is intolerable” – Le Parisian

The blame game has begun in earnest. French soccer team’s poor showing and ignoble exit has led to a lot of soul searching.

Right wing philosopher Alain Finkielkraut compared the team to youths rioting in ghettos. “We now have proof that the France team is not a team at all, but a gang of hooligans that knows only the morals of the mafia,” he said. This is not an isolated view. The hard economic times have unmasked and exposed the deep ethnic divisions within the French society.

The French Team

Commentators have been quick to point out that the dissension in the multicultural French team – it’s members are of Algerian, West Indian, African and European descent – is a reflection of the overall socio-cultural divisions and unrest facing the French society. Finkielkraut went on to suggest that the “arrogant thugs” in the side should be replaced by “gentlemen“.

Reading between the lines it becomes evident that it is being implied that (Philippe Auclair’s interview with the BBC):

It is the money obsessed, intellectually inept and morally bankrupt youths (who are paid obscenely to play football) who are from ethnic minorities who have behaved ignobly and hurt the French nation.

This could be a part explanation, but it doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.  The malaise is actually at the institutional level. It is primarily a product of poor leadership and unethical practices within Soccer as a sport – worldwide.

What is it that leads very intelligent people to ignore the real issues, and seek false explanations? The answer can be found in neuroscience, behavioural economics and perverse institutions.

John Terry’s big mistake – “why and how” of the failed coup of Soccer World Cup 2010

It was no small mistake, according to the England manager Fabio Capello – “This is the big mistake. This is very big mistake. I know sometimes some players want to speak more with the media than with the other players.”

Why did John Terry speak to the media instead of the coach? John Terry’s belief that he was supported by his senior team mates and the statements made by Capello offer a very unique opportunity to look into the situation. Loss aversion, leadership, whistle-blower’s predicament and degradation rituals – there is a lot to learn from behavioral economics, politics of power and anthropology.

John Terry

The Situation

The whole world is watching you. The cumulative audience numbers for the Soccer World Cup is expected to be around 27 billion. But more importantly for the players all the top club team representatives (owners, managers and coaches etc) are also watching. Doing well in the world cup could result in very lucrative contracts. Doing badly on the other hand could lose them their current standing and contracts they have now.  

England’s soccer team’s performance has been a huge disappointment for its fans, it drew with USA. The goal keeper Robert Green’s “Hand of Clod” goal has cost him dearly. The fans booed the team off the field after its 1-1 draw with Algeria a team that is ranked 30^th, 22 places below England.

Loss Aversion

The focus is always on the senior players. They are ones with established reputations and of course the subject of great expectations.  If they are seen as the ones that did not perform they could lose lucrative contracts. They want to be seen as right, and one of the ways they could do so is by blaming someone in authority (scapegoat). No system and no person is perfect, if you look closely you can always find faults (mostly heaps of them). The easiest and most prominent target – Fabio Capello (he is also an outsider – an Italian).

Dolphin watching, selective perception and sensory limitation: Are we helping or hurting the dolphins?

Can something as innocent as Dolphin watching harm the environment? The answer is a surprising yes. It can devastate the very dolphins that we have come to love. How can this happen in such an enlightened age? The answer lies in the way we perceive our environment.

From San Diego in the US to Kaikoura in New Zealand, dolphin watching is touted as one of the greatest adventures in ecotourism. The international ecotourism society defines ecotourism as “Responsible travel to natural areas that conserves the environment and improves the well-being of local people.” It seems like the perfect, guilt free, adventure.

A pod of dophins

Dolphin watching is not benign

A team of international scientists, led by Lars Bejder studied the long term impact of tour operators on the sustainability of the bottle nose dolphins. They studied a 36 square kilometre area in Shark Bay, Western Australia, over a period 13.5 years. They found that as long as there was a single tour operator there was no major impact on the dolphin population. But once the number of operators increased to two the dolphin population declined by 15%, such a decline can devastate small local populations of dolphins – like Hector’s Dolphin in New Zealand. Dolphin watching is not benign – why?

Dolphin Culture!!?

Once you dive underwater our vision, which is great on land, becomes very poor. Marine animals have evolved over millions of years to overcome this sensory limitation by adapting to sound – sonar imaging. They use sound to communicate. They are also social animals that propagate their culture through songs. Humpback whale populations in different areas have their own songs. In Bermuda, humpback whales change, on average, 37% of their song each year, too rapid a rate to be explained plausibly by genes. It took 15 years to change the entire song. However, off the east coast of Australia, the entire song changed within two years to match that found off the west coast, apparently triggered by the movement of a few individuals from the west to the east. The dolphins also use the songs to find and pair with a mate.

The greatest disturbance to whales and dolphins is the noise created by our ships and tour vessles. It lies in the same frequency range as the dolphin and whale songs. It disrupts their ability to communicate, mate and propagate their culture and population.

Our Sensory Limitation

Because we don’t live underwater and can’t hear the songs of the dolphin, we discount the impact that we have on their environment. It is an anthropocentric view resulting from the limitations of our senses.

Most of us are desperate to believe that ecotourism is safe and good. This leads to a selective perception bias – we let our expectations influence our perceptions.

It is not that we should stop dolphin watching altogether, we should evaluate very carefully when, where and under what circumstances should we implement ecotourism.

Patternicity, Causality and Distress: Why we make mistakes in stressful times

Have you ever come away from a critical negotiation, presentation, meeting or interview wondering – “why on earth did I say that?” Not only are you not alone, you may even be in elite company.

“We care about the small people,” said Carl Svanberg, the chairman of BP. While the comment has become a source of feeding frenzy for global news media and blogosphere (most of it tainted with schadenfreude); the question that really needs to be answered is “under what circumstances would an articulate, charismatic & proven business leader come across as ineffective, insensitive and gaff prone?”

The answer may be in how we evolved, the limitations of the tools we use to make sense of our world, and what happens to us under stress.

Making Sense of the world around us

Face on Mars

Human ability to sense patterns in our immediate environment was vital during the course of our evolution. If you were an early hominid, and you heard rustling in the grass, you had to make an immediate decision – was it the wind, or is it a tiger? If you made the wrong choice you would become lunch. But we are not so good at detecting the difference in false and true patterns. We must be aware of Patternicity – when we see meaningful patterns in meaningless random noise e.g. face on mars, Virgin Mary on a grilled cheese sandwich etc.   

Our cognitive limitations

Patternicity results in two kinds of errors; type I error, false positive, when you assume that there is something and it is not there (in our example you assume that it is a tiger, but it turns out to be the wind); and type II error, false negative, when you assume that something is not there and it is there (you assume that there is no tiger, but it is a tiger and you end up as lunch).

We have evolved to make type I errors – it is better to be safe than sorry. Type I error takes less mental effort. For type II errors the brain has to consider a wide range of possibilities, sort and qualify evidence – it is expensive in terms of time, effort and intellect. But the type II errors, when made, are far more disastrous.

Limited information

But many a times we do not have enough information to understand and explain these patterns. In such circumstances we try and come up with our own view of what is causing these patterns. Whenever we receive information or stimuli, our brain tries to make sense of it e.g.  when the wearers of the God Helmet (see my earlier post) perceived stimuli in a sensory deprived environment  they thought that they were in the presence of angels or Gollum, depending upon their view of life. This is also the reason that in the absence of enough information we begin to imagine scenarios and situations (many of them are, sadly, far from the truth), mostly ones that could lead to negative outcomes – we start to create our own type I errors, imagining that there is a tiger when it is only the wind. (I suspect this is also the reason people quit perfectly good careers, leave good marriages and relationships, or commit suicide). It also increases type II errors as we ignore the real world for the imaginary – burying our heads in the sand e.g. not being aware of politics at work.

In face of crisis – lessons from neuroscience

Perception of patterns occurs in the right hemisphere of the brain (this is why the left handed people tend to be far more creative) and is influenced by levels of dopamine (higher levels of dopamine increases the ability to see patterns), and the analysis to weed out errors in these patterns takes place in the prefrontal cortex (PFC).But when we are angry, upset, anxious, distressed or depressed our dopamine levels fall – reducing our ability to see patterns and the capacity to sense errors move to the primitive brain. Along with the decreased ability to sense the patterns, there is an increase in the meaningless patterns – we start making up information and scenarios that are not totally based on reality, accompanied by potentially disastrous results.

Hardwired to err?

Are we doomed to commit errors? No, not really!! Mankind has been looking at various ways to deal with and reduce stress. This may take the form of recreation, sport, music, meditation, gratitude, compassion and prayer. This is validated by Neuroscientists Dr Andrew Newburg and Mark Waldman who, in their book How God Changes Your Brain: Breakthrough Findings from a Leading Neuroscientist, have found that belief in God (any kind) reduces your stress, thus improving the way you deal with crisis and stressful situations.

Considering the facts that BP had caused, and was unable to fix, one the greatest environmental disasters, there was poor insight into the decision making a four hour grilling by the most powerful man on earth, it is easy to see how Carl Svanberg   an “articulate and charismatic” proven leader could turn into a wooden, error prone, bumbling individual with “lower-profile than an agoraphobic prairie dog.”

We will continue to face such situations on a daily basis, more so when we are anxious – when someone does not get back to us on time about a business deal; when someone fails to turn up to an appointment; your partner is spending too much time at work etc. Whenever you are faced with such a situation, remember that these situations are not in your in control; combined with very little information (some of it manufactured by your anxious and overactive brain) it can be easy to jump to the wrong conclusion.

 What can we do to avoid such situations?  Avoid getting distressed, try exercising, meditation, praying, or surrounding yourself with people who you can trust in a crisis, and most importantly don’t let problems turn to crises, especially by imagining things that haven’t happened.

Penalty Shooter’s Paradox: why experts avoid implementing simple solutions

In a world obsessed with complexity is it possible that we are performing sub optimally because the experts we employ are embarrassed to be seen presenting or implementing a simple solution?

Economists find that the way soccer players’ play conforms very closely to the theoretical ideal predicted by game theory. However, there is a stunning exception, one that we should sit up and take notice – especially the complexity obsessed corporate world. Stephen Levitt, and his colleagues, at University of Chicago found that there “is one big deviation that we see between what players actually do and what the theory predicts: kickers kick the ball right down the middle much less than they should. Or put another way, in practice, kicking it down the middle scores at a higher rate than kicking it either to the left or right”.

Penalty Shot

So if kicking down the middle has a higher chance of scoring, why don’t they? Soccer is a team sport, but this is where it gets a bit interesting – each player wants his team to win but not at the expense of being seen as a fool. Kicking down the middle however effective, is seen as something a novice would do.

This is common place everyday behaviour. Staff and consultants of organisations both large and small, feel that they will be judged by peers to be professional only if they come up with a solution that showcases their intellect and application of skill, usually evidenced by a report that showcases their analysis through a complex model on a huge spreadsheet, when in fact they are aware that there is a far simpler and probably cost effective solution that would have suited the organisation better.

It is very important for key decision makers to recognise the “Penalty Shooter’s Paradox” and ask if a simpler solution was considered. This is critical for all organisations: in the government – to avoid costly and complex, therefore doomed, social programmes; in business to ensure that you have a healthy bottom line; and, for not-for-profits ensuring that the very little that they have goes a long way.

So the next time someone presents you with a solution, just see if you can spot whether the person presenting the solution is only showcasing their expertise, or does their solution also optimise the benefit the organisation. As Leonardo da Vinci said “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication”.