I just attended a big Diversity Summit and while I puzzle through what I’d like to write about that, I figured I’d leave you with some thoughts on complexity since it seems to be a hot topic this week. First my friend over at Building Peace wrote about it on his blog, and now the New York Times has a very similar piece in this weekend’s Week in Review. Both excellent reads.

Complexity was one of the big things I learned about in graduate school and something that fascinates me. The NYTimes article points out the huge difference between complicated problems and complex ones, and how we prefer to tackle the former rather than the latter. I took an excellent class in Problem Solving and Decision Making and this was one of the big things we looked at. Complicated problems can be broken down and solved in an analytical way. Complex problems, on the other hand, cannot be broken into parts. If you try to break apart complex problems and solve them individually or analytically like a complicated one, you will usually end up making the problem worse or creating new problems…complex problems are what happens between the parts. People problems are almost always complex because they deal with relationships, meanings and interactions. Complex problems don’t have neat, tidy answers. You solve complexity with synthesis (design). Science solves problems; design eliminates them. The article argues an interesting point that part of our love for the complicated is that it makes us feel smart, where as complex problems are often about simplicity. It’s an interesting way of looking at it…

“We get seduced by the complicated in Western society,” Ms. Zimmerman says. “We’re in awe of it and we pull away from the duty to ask simple questions, which we do whenever we deal with matters that are complex.”

Analysis is a great tool for most problem solving, but the fatal flaw to linear or analytical thinking is thinking of people like parts and trying to solve people problems the way you would fix a car or a disease. People are not mechanical, they have goals and dreams and ideas of their own that may conflict with a company’s goals or ideas and may conflict with others. This is why culture, values and mission are often so important…it gives people a central unifying thing to drive collective behavior. When you look at the current military conundrums in Iraq and Afghanistan, one of their biggest blunders was in not understanding the people and culture and thinking they could execute a mechanical battle plan. Eventually they brought in anthropologists and social scientists to map the “human terrain,” but people are complex and it takes a ton of time. We like complicated, but often don’t have the stomach for complex. I’ve written about it before, but I think part of learning to live with this complexity is in inviting more humanities and social science into engineering and math and vice versa. The business schools could use some “people” stuff in their curriculums too.

One of the most influential people on studying complex problems is the late Dr. Russ Ackoff. I had the privilege to meet him in person before he died and much of my thesis was written on his principles. He absolutely changed my way of thinking and made me believe we can live in a complex world and tackle complex problems and actually really enjoy doing it. The main thing is that you can’t be afraid to fail or look stupid. Come to think of it…that’s probably what a lot of my diversity post will be about…we’ll see. Since Dr. Ackoff is much smarter and more eloquent than me, here’s a link to one of his speeches where he describes how to attack complexity. I’d encourage you to read the whole thing, but here are a few excerpts that I feel tackle some of the problems with how most of our corporations, the military and the government operate, and why they have a hard time dealing with complexity:

Most large social systems are pursuing objectives other than the ones they proclaim, and the ones they pursue are wrong. They try to do the wrong thing righter, and this makes what they do wronger. It is much better to do the right thing wrong than the wrong thing right, because when errors are corrected, it makes doing the wrong thing wronger but the right thing righter.

Few individuals, and fewer organizations, know how to facilitate and accelerate learning—the acquisition of knowledge—let alone understanding and wisdom. It takes a support system to do so. All learning ultimately derives from mistakes. When we do something right, we already know how to do it; the most we get out of it is confirmation of our rightness. Mistakes are of two types: commission (doing what should not have been done) and omission (not doing what should have been done). Errors of omission are generally much more serious than errors of commission, but errors of commission are the only ones picked up by most accounting systems. Since mistakes are a no-no in most corporations, and the only mistakes identified and measured are ones involving doing something that should not have been done, the best strategy for managers is to do as little as possible.

Managers are incurably susceptible to panacea peddlers. They are rooted in the belief that there are simple, if not simple-minded, solutions to even the most complex of problems. And they do not learn from bad experiences. Managers fail to diagnose the failures of the fads they adopt; they do not understand them. Most panaceas fail because they are applied antisystemically. They need not be, but to do otherwise requires an understanding of systems and the ability to think systemically. The perceived need to learn something new is inversely proportional to the rank of a manager. Those at the top feel obliged to pretend to omniscience, and therefore refuse to learn anything new even if the cost of doing so is success.

RIP Dr. Ackoff. The world is a much more complex place without you.

After she had told her story about why she decided to go to the Citadel, she talked openly and honestly about the hazing and mistreatment that she had endured at a still mostly-male college. The thing she highlighted though was how lucky she was to be in a company with male classmates who didn’t tolerate the treatment and were the first to take on bigoted or cruel behavior. The women definitely bonded together and looked out for each other, but it was the courageous male classmates who made the difference. It would have been easy to ignore or go along with the mistreatment of a minority group, it always is, but they didn’t see it as mistreatment of a minority, but rather mistreatment of a Citadel cadet and a classmate. It reminded me of one of my favorite books, My Losing Season by Pat Conroy. Conroy talks about an incident his freshman year at the Citadel and how the solidarity of his classmates got him through. He said:

But on the night of my meltdown, at my lowest moment as a brother and ruined plebe, the armors of the brotherhood began to form their secret shells around me, to enfold me into the house where the regiment whispers its softest words to its initiates. The seniors checked up on me all during evening study period. My classmates from R Company sneaked down to my room to offer words of encouragement and solidarity, and to ask me to stay. The boys who’d suffered with my since Hell Night looked in on me, spoke gently to me, comforted me, and tried to ease my suffering…my classmates came and left me a gift in their wake-they sealed forever my desire to be one of them. What I hated most about the Citadel had occurred in that shower room, but what I honored most about it happened in my room with a solid line of head-shaven boys made their way to my bedside to lay the hands of brotherhood upon me.

It’s the conundrum that many times places that house the greatest cruelties and intolerance, are often also the places that house the greatest compassion, courage, and love. Somehow, despite the odds, the latter wins out eventually. As my father was telling me about this young woman’s talk, I was thinking about the military’s difficulties with diversity and making everyone feel welcome and part of the team. I realized that although affinity groups and outreach groups help those of us in the minority to band together and help each other, things aren’t going to change all that much until the majority starts getting pissed off. I was eating dinner with a friend of mine who is going to be second in command of one of our larger ships. He talked about going out for a week on his new ship and realizing that he only had one female enlisted member. He laughed and said “I think you’ve had an effect on me cause that really pissed me off.”

I think about times when I’ve been flying or at parties and people say kind of offensive things and often my instinct is to just let it go. The last thing you want to do is make a big deal about it and have the guys roll their eyes that they have to be all “PC” now cause they have a woman at the base. Our human instinct is to just want to fit in. We all want to be judged on our abilities, not our race, gender, or other distinctive quality. It takes courage to stand up for mistreatment of others, because it puts you at risk of not fitting in. We really need people with this kind of courage though, to stand up for people because they’re people, not because they’re black, female, tree-huggers, or Mormon. We need people who stand up for shipmates, classmates, and coworkers. Hurt one, hurt all.

Another friend of mine has a “knock it off” policy towards intolerant speech in the aircraft or at the unit. Instead of lecturing the person or making a big deal about it, if someone is saying something derogatory or cruel she just says “knock it off” and leaves it at that. It works pretty well. You don’t have to die on the beach or take a huge stand, you just have to stop poor behavior before it gets out of hand or accepted. The more people do it, the more “fitting in” will be redefined.

The young woman also described abuse received by alumni at football games as she led her battalion onto the field. She noted that the most abusive were the younger alumni and the older alumni were often the most supportive. I’ve noticed this even with the CG Academy. The older retired Admirals are the most appalled when they hear of any mistreatment of women and minorities. Diversity to them seems a no-brainer. It’s the younger alumni who seem to have a distorted view of “tradition” and the harmful influence of people not like them. Maybe as their daughters get older, they’re minds will change.

There is a section at the end of Pat Conroy’s book that has always stuck with me and although it is long I would like to reproduce it here because it illustrates the power of one person who has the courage to not fit in and do what is right, not because he want to be nice to women or minorities, but because it is right.

In a lecture tour of colleges in the early nineties, I spoke one night at the Rhode Island School of Design and was surprised that I was speaking at the Coast Guard Academy the following evening. Since The Lords of Discipline, my name was anathema at all military schools. The poor English professor who had invited me was distraught when he met me at the airport.

“I had no idea you were so controversial,” he said. “The commandant of the Coast Guard is flying up from Washington. He’s going to be sitting in the first row. He swears he’ll fire me if you say anything that irritates him.”

“Relax, professor. I’ve never talked to the whole corps. We’ll have a blast.”

And so we did. I addressed the freshmen in the morning, and before I began speaking, I looked out into the exhausted sea of plebes and said, “What in the hell are all you girls doing here?” Fully a quarter of the class was female.

The female cadet who was on of my escorts stepped up and said, “Congress passed a law in 1974 admitting females to all the academies.”

“I had no idea,” I said. “This is amazing.”

That night I told stories of my life as a cadet at The Citadel, and those midshipmen became the most animated, rollicking audience I have ever spoken to. The commandant rushed up to the podium after the speech and asked me to fly down with him to the Pentagon to meet his staff. He invited me to address the Coast Guard Academy every year. The night was so successful it made me mourn for the loss of The Citadel in my life.

Four women of the Coast Guard Academy drove me to the airport the next day. All of them were sharp, radiant, lovely. I asked the woman driving what she wanted to do in the Coast Guard.

“Fly an attack helicopter, sir,” she answered.

“No kidding? What are the rest of you going to do?”

All three wanted to captain their own ships. When I was about to board the plane, one of the women said, “How did you like your stay at our school, Mr. Conroy?”

“Loved every minute of it,” I said. “ I had the time of my life.”

“How did you like us, sir? The women of the Coast Guard Academy?”

“You’re fabulous. I want my daughters to grow up to be just like you women.”

“Sir, we’d like to ask you a favor,” another one said.

“Anything,” I replied.

The fourth woman said, “When the first woman applies to The Citadel, will you support her? She’s going to need some help and she won’t have much.”

Her suggestion shocked me, and I said, “Young women of the Coast Guard Academy, you don’t know my college. It won’t happen. No way. Not in my lifetime. You don’t know The Citadel.”

The first woman, an Asian from San Francisco who had introduced me the night before, said, “Mr. Conroy, you don’t know women.”

I looked at the four women and said, “You’ve got my word of honor. If a woman applies to The Citadel, I’ll support her one hundred percent.”

Several years later after reading about Shannon Faulkner’s entry into The Citadel, I received a letter from one of those women and I tore it up as soon as I read it. She reminded me of my promise, and said what had moved her the most in my speech was my talk about serving on The Citadel’s Honor Court. She said because of that, she knew I could be counted on to keep my word.

As I threw the letter in the garbage I said out loud, “Those goddamn women are going to get me killed.”

But I thought about the invoking of the honor code of The Citadel. In those words, I heard a subtle, secret taunt that The Citadel’s honor code didn’t quite measure up to the standards of their code at the Coast Guard Academy. I thought about who I was as a man and what was important to me and what I believed in and the things that mattered. Later that afternoon I placed a phone call to South Carolina, and when Shannon Faulkner answered I said, “My name is Pat Conroy and I’m about to become your best friend.”

The Shannon Faulkner years marked the nadir of my parlous relationship with my college, and I thought nothing could ever repair the damage. There were alumni and classmates who thought I meant to destroy the college and were eloquent and passionate in their hatred of me. When the brotherhood turned mean against this lone South Carolina girl, I used my own infinite capacity for meanness in return. I thought the entire affair could be conducted with gentlemanly restraint, disgusted when bumper stickers began sprouting throughout the state—“The Citadel, 2000 cadets and one bitch.”

After Shannon’s departure, The Citadel found, to its dismay, that it was surrounded on all four sides by the United States of America, and its name became synonymous with woman-hating all over the world. Enrollment tumbled and applications were dwindling. American mothers did not seem interested in their boys joining the mob who taunted a young woman they had just run out of the Corps of Cadets. Meanwhile, the girls still came and their march through the gates of Lesesne was resolute and unstoppable.

My father asked me to call The Citadel. “The Citadel needs you now, son. It’s in free fall.” I called the school and thus took the first shy steps back.

Now I stood watching a parade of Citadel men and forty women marching out to a field where I once marched. Near the end of the parade, I waited for Romeo company to pass in review before me. Since I was a cadet I knew how to salute and knew how to do it right, but I’d been practicing in front of a mirror for a week. When R Company guidon snapped down in salute, I raised my right hand to my eyebrow. It took me by complete surprise when I saluted Cadet Captain Rosie Gonzalez, the first woman ever to rise to company commander of the Corps of Cadets. She further delighted me by giving me a wink of complicity as she passed. I was back in the brotherhood—and brand spanking new to the sisterhood.

We need more Pat Conroys. It would have been easy to ignore that promise and that letter and be quietly accepted back into the brotherhood he so desperately wanted to be a part of again. But he didn’t. The irony is that his stand for women ultimately put him in a position to save the men. It’s not a zero sum game. When we have the courage to stand up for those that don’t “fit in,” we stand up for all of us. Diversity is imperative for the survival of our organization. We embrace and defend a white male majority at the peril of becoming irrelevant to the rest of the world. As with most traditions, we’re defending the moat while the castle is burning. Women and minorities aren’t trying to get into institutions to destroy them, but rather to save them. They can’t do it on their own. It’s going to take courageous people, who can happily blend into the status quo, to take a stand and not let any of their shipmates drown.

The military has every right to determine “conditions for employment” and restrict people who they do not feel are physically capable of doing the job or who could become a burden on the military health system (which is tax payer funded and free). The problem I have with the weight program is that I haven’t seen any significant proof that there is a correlation between someone’s body fat and getting the mission done that can’t also be attributed to smoking, drinking, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and being underweight (all non-disqualifying if you’re already in the military). It seems like we’ve picked something that is easy, that fits our culture and found a justification for it. The common argument is that “people need to be personally responsible” and the only reason people are over their body fat is of course because they are “lazy.” Heaven forbid we should document their “laziness” in the already existing performance report…far easier to say they’re too fat and get rid of them. The funny thing is that all the health arguments made for why we can’t have overweight or overfat people can all be made, with even greater scientific proof, for smoking. So why don’t we make being a non-smoker a condition of employment? Stopping smoking is far more under a person’s control than weight. I’ve never had anyone over body fat ask me for a 10-minute break every couple hours, but my smokers expect it. Unfortunately, if we made non-smoking a condition of employment, one third of our workforce would be on probation.

The health arguments are legitimate, although the fact that this program is run by the personnel branch and not the health branch makes me suspect these are the main reasons for the program. I’m all for promoting healthy lives and encouraging behavior that will keep people out of the VA, but this program does none of that. Weight has been shown to correlate with an increased risk of diabetes, high cholesterol, high blood pressure and other risk factors. An article in the latest issue of Coast Guard magazine states it as causing these things (Statistics 101 – correlation does not equal cause). Even if it was a cause, however, the fact remains that you can develop any one of these conditions and stay in the military as long as you’re not fat and have those conditions. We’re not creating a healthy workforce with this policy. The former Marine Corps Commandant had a saying “Don’t Just Look Good. Be Good.” I like this philosophy. I don’t care how someone looks as long as they can do the job. The arguments made for our weight program sound eerily similar to those made by the airlines for needing their flight attendants to be young, pretty and thin instead of competent, qualified and able. Were those restrictions still in place today, the passengers who survived the landing of a U.S. Airways jet in the Hudson River would not have benefited from the average 20 years experience of each flight crew member.

Another problem I have with the program is that the organization assumes no responsibility in the equation. Everything is blamed on the individual and their choices. To quote the article:

“It’s the context of people’s lives that determines their health,” said a World Health Organization report on health disparities. “So blaming individuals for poor health or crediting them for good health is inappropriate.”

Walk into any military commissary and note how much healthy, fresh food there is. Walk into any military exchange and note the floor space devoted to alcohol and cigarettes. Open up a box lunch provided to our aircrews and find anything healthy, unprocessed, or sugar-free. How are we supposed to encourage healthy behavior when everywhere you walk on a base it screams at you that our culture is to be unhealthy? There’s an excellent series put out by PBS called Unnatural Causes, about all the factors that go into our weight that have little to do with personal choices. One episode talks about how the people of the Marshall Islands were some of the healthiest people in the world until the U. S. military moved there. The processed and packaged food the military brought with them actually changed the health of the people who lived there. I don’t think we can ignore organizational and societal influences in all of this.

So now that I’ve outlined my problems (and those are only a few of them) with this program…what are my solutions? I think we should have a more robust program that focuses on total health and links directly to the mission. The mishap investigation of the 1979 collision of the USCGC Cuyahoga talked about a type of asthmatic condition the skipper had which could have caused him to not see the approaching ship’s lights properly (lack of oxygen can cause vision problems, especially at night – why pilots are encouraged not to smoke). As a result of this, the board recommended the Coast Guard establish some form of “fit for duty” medical qualification.

I would like to see the Coast Guard be the first military service to establish “fit for duty” physicals for every specialty (not just aviation). This already exists in some form, but not as robust as the flight physicals. This would be administered by the military health program rather than military personnel, so people’s privacy would be protected and decisions would be made on fitness, not appearance. An algorithm could be developed which weighted different aspects of health including cholesterol, LDLs, HDLs, weight, body fat, blood sugar, health habits, etc. and spit out a number. If your number is over the “fit for duty” score, then your doctor could discuss behavior and health changes which would reduce your score. This would mean that a skinny guy with sky-high cholesterol might have to stop smoking, exercise and take cholesterol medication, while a person 1% over body fat but otherwise the picture of health would be advised on how to reduce body fat, but otherwise cleared for duty since they are actually a lower risk. This approach would not only force people to focus on all their bad habits, but would also identify high risk people who don’t outwardly show signs of unhealthiness. The taxpayers are paying for them too, and they deserve the healthiest force, not just the thinnest.

We already have systems in place to get rid of unfit people (medical boards) and lazy people (fitness evaluations). So instead of inventing a parallel system, that takes an incredible amount of time and money to administer, let’s stop being lazy ourselves and figure out better ways to use those systems we already have in place. Let’s start identifying the people who are good, not just the ones who look good. Let’s take organizational responsibility for health and fitness. Instead of cheap booze and cigarettes, why don’t we start selling cheap organic food or whole food? If we made our culture about health instead of bad habits, I think the problem would start solving itself.

I’m a junkie for documentaries. In fact, I often enjoy watching the “Making of” part of a DVD more than the movie. The way people tell stories fascinates me, and documentary makers are masters. So I downloaded “Truth in 24″ from iTunes for free and sat down to watch it earlier this week. I don’t care if you like nothing about cars, you should watch this movie. It’s about so much more than a car race.

The filmmakers follow the Audi team (drivers, engineers, mechanics, etc.) as they take on their biggest rival, Peugot. Peugot has the better car, but it has never been tested in a 24 hour race. Audi has to gamble that their people can make up for what lacks in their machine. The reason why I loved it so much is that it is one of the only movies I’ve seen that captures what it’s like to be part of a team that’s trying to beat the odds…too me it captured what it’s like to be a Search and Rescue crew. It’s about attention to detail, teamwork, trust, relentless training, and learning from your mistakes.

The movie starts out with the line “It always rains in Le Mans.” It perfectly captures the mood. You can approach a challenge two ways, hope for the best or prepare for the worst. You see the mechanics and drivers endlessly running through drill after drill, planning for any eventuality and precisely executing down to the millisecond. Like us, they train until it becomes habit; unconscious competence. The drivers can take you through every curve with their eyes closed…a skill they need for driving in total blackness well in excess of 100 mph.

I think the part I liked the most was watching “H” the Audi team engineer. Each car has 3 drivers who can drive no more than 4 hours at a time. Part of the strategy is deciding when to switch drivers as well as wheels and fuel. The concentration and strength needed to drive the 9 mile loop in under 3 ½ minutes is enormous, but at least they get a break. “H” stays up the entire 24 hours coaching them through it. He is the one who makes the critical calls on which wheels to put on the car, when to switch drivers, when to pit the car. One mistake will cost the race, and with the weaker car, Audi has absolutely no room for error. “H” is so skilled at his job that he can predict rain to within 3 minutes, and he is the one who knows that “it always rains in Le Mans”…Audi counts on it.

There’s one point where they ask him if he can take a break at all and he explains that he is the main link to the drivers, and he can’t afford to leave them out there on their own. He answers their questions, calms them down, explains the pit evolutions in concise, clear terms so they can process the information while trying to keep their cars from careening off the track, and he even argues with them (always winning). “H” reminded me of our Flight mechanics in the helicopter. Pilots and drivers are always the heroes and get all the accolades for a job well done, and they deserve it for the training and skill needed to get the job done. But every good pilot and driver knows they’re nothing without their flight mechanic or engineer. It’s a team effort every step of the way. I call our Flight mechanics “seeing eye dogs for the blind.” As pilots, we sit well forward of the hoist assembly, so what we’re looking at out our cockpit window is well forward of what we’re hoisting to. This requires the flight mechanic, who is operating the hoist, to have to literally fly the aircraft with his/her voice, while also trying to rescue someone or put our swimmer safely on a boat or in the water. I’m usually staring straight down at water or some part of a boat that is moving, but most of my brain is latched onto the calm, precise commands coming from my flight mechanic….Forward and right 10, forward and right 5, eeeaasy forward and right, and Hold…basket’s going down, eaasy right, basket’s halfway down, position’s good…

We practice it over and over, just like a pit crew. The glue holding it together is that flight mech’s voice calmly talking you through. His/her voice is directly tied to my hand. In Crew Resource Management (CRM) class, they once showed us a hoist camera video from a real training flight where the flight mechanic actually got pulled out of the cabin door and was hanging by his gunner’s belt. They just played the audio for us at first and it sounded like any boat hoist flight on any other day…then they showed the video. The flight mechanic didn’t even break his calm cadence as he was ripped out of the cabin and eventually pulled back in by the rescue swimmer. The pilots had no idea what had happened behind them. So as I watched “H” in his engineering booth calmly talking to his drivers, letting them know what weather was coming and where the other cars were, monitoring their gauges and letting them know what to expect at the next pit stop…I was reminded of our tight-knit teams and how much I miss working with them. There is nothing more magical or fun than getting in a helicopter with a crew that is clicking together.

I often wonder why you can’t replicate that trust and teamwork and precision in other teams and jobs. I think it has to do with the stakes and the life or death nature of the job. Fear focuses you like nothing else and makes you depend on people because it’s impossible to survive on your own. Without that I think people tend to default to self preservation and ego. It’s funny cause for the Audi team it was about winning a coveted prize and proving their machine, and with us it’s often about saving someone’s life…but in the end I think we all give 150% more because we don’t want to let anyone on our team down, more than the prize itself.

It’s a great movie and it’s free on iTunes. I highly recommend it. And next time you go out on a beautiful sunny day without your lifejacket, seatbelt, or helmet…remember…“it always rains in Le Mans.” Fortune favors the prepared.

I figured since I haven’t talked about design so much yet, I should share some of my projects I’ve done as part of my education. Before I went to art school, I really had no idea how to draw. I wasn’t even sure if it was something you could learn. Many of us majoring in graphic design were decent at working on the computer, but very few of us had ever drawn extensively with pencil and paper.

One of the first things we had to learn was about “value”. Value is the lightness and darkness of an object. Value is something that a lot of us struggled with at first because it’s very difficult to see beyond color. It’s a little like those posters that were popular in the early 90’s, where it looked like just a random pattern, but if you stared at it long enough and fuzzed your eyes all of a sudden a dolphin or the Statue of Liberty popped out. Value is how you make things look 3D instead of just a flat image. Try looking at objects and just see where the light and shadows fall. Often things that stick up will be the lightest, while the recessed areas are darker. You see this when drawing faces. The darkest areas are the eyes, nostrils and the corners of the mouth, with the cheekbones and nose being the lightest. This is why soldiers will use the darkest camouflage on their cheekbones, nose and chin and the lightest around their eye sockets.

Here’s an early drawing I did of eggs. Notice the dark and light which tricks your eyes into thinking these objects aren’t flat. (I apologize for the blurriness)

Once you start being able to see value and look past color, you view the whole world a little differently. I started seeing things on the subway and as I walked around and could picture how I would draw and shade them to look real.

Another key to drawing lifelike objects is to not use any lines. This is one of the harder things to do since it’s usually breaking us of something we’ve done since we were old enough to hold a crayon. If you look at real objects though, almost nothing has lines. You instead create edges with shading (value).

Look at the difference between this ship I drew with lines and the tuna fin without. Which looks more real?

The pencil you use is very important. There are many different hardnesses of graphite pencil, but the 2B pencil is recommended for drawing. Paper is also important since the weave and texture will hold the graphite. In order to be able to get the most shades (or values) from your pencil, you should rub it at about a 45 degree angle on a sheet of paper until is resembles how lipstick comes out of the tube. This will give you a nice soft edge instead of a hard point. You can use the point to lightly sketch your object so you can have something to start from. Then you just begin shading without lifting the pencil, darker in the recessed areas and lighter towards to more concave areas where the light strikes. It takes a lot of practice and a good eraser, but the more you do it, the easier it is to see.

Next time you go to an art gallery look closely at the paintings and see if you can see some of the things I’ve discussed (lack of lines, values to add depth). It really makes you appreciate the art and it will make you look at the actual world a little bit differently. It made me understand the importance of light and why flying on night vision goggles can be so difficult. Although the goggles amplify light so you can see things, they just don’t have all the values that sunlight will give you and you therefore lose a lot of depth perception. Glacier flying gives a similar phenomenon. You’re eyes are seeking contrast to be able to tell contour and height, but “flat light” conditions make everything appear without any value (flat) to give your eyes clues.

Drawing class made me see things differently. I was able to translate the lessons I learned there into by Illustrator work, by seeing the light and shade in a photograph and being able to translate those into shapes. Here is an illustration I did of Valentino Rossi. The first picture is the photo I used, and the second is my hand drawing (on the computer) of it. Notice the wrinkles in his sleeve and how you can simulate the shadow with gray against the white. The wheel is probably a better example. This is one of my early works and so it’s still a little rough, but you get the idea. Art is often more about seeing than it is about innate skills.

Philadelphia is known for its many murals. They are amazing pieces of artwork all over the city. I had a lot of favorites, but my absolute favorite was one that almost no one sees because it is so real. I didn’t even notice it for awhile even though it was only a couple blocks from where I lived. It was painted on a wall next to a gas station. Hundreds of people pull into that station looking right at it and miss it. Below is the painting. It seems unremarkable until you realize that the whole thing is painted on the side of a flat concrete wall. There are no real bricks, no doors, no windows and no church across the street. It is so real, I literally had to walk up to the wall and touch it to make sure there was no actual depth on the wall. If you’re ever in Philly near 23^rd and Walnut, check out the wall by the Sunoco, it’s an amazing study in deception and art. The irony of art is that you often learn to appreciate the real world through the study of the imitation. More than anything it makes you pay attention and appreciate a lot more of what’s right in front of you.

Now I’m going back to drawing!

I saw a lot of parallels with leadership, which was not surprising since I truly believer leaders are forms of teachers. In one of my classes in leadership, a student asked the instructor what the definition of a good leaders was. The teacher asked us to think of the best teacher we ever had and he wrote “Good Teacher” up on the board. He then asked us to tell him why they were the best teacher and he wrote down all of our answers under the heading. We came up with things like “pushed us to be better,” “passionate about what they were teaching,” “believed in you,” etc. After we had gotten down all our ideas on the board, he simply crossed out the word “Teacher” and wrote “Leader” in its place. It was a point well taken.

One of the best lines in this article was:

“Teaching depends on what other people think,” Ball told me, “not what you think.”

She was pointing out that teachers don’t just have to know their subjects, but they have to understand all the different ways other people can not understand or misunderstand their subjects. This is often hard for very smart people who haven’t made a lot of mistakes or misunderstood things in their lives.

This is one of the reasons I believe we need a balance in the military. It sounds good to only accept the “best and brightest,” but I think you might lose some of your best potential teachers by only recruiting people with 4.0s and 1600 SATs. We need those people, but we need the next layer down as well…the ones who learned the hard way.

I often use the analogy of military drill to illustrate my point. I was an excellent driller. I could follow orders and execute them flawlessly. I knew when I heard “Left Flank, March” that I was to take one step and pivot left on the balls of me feet and start marching in the new direction. I should have made an excellent drill instructor. The problem is instructing drill requires an entirely different set of skills and knowledge than executing drill. I had no idea what foot left flank was called on, it didn’t matter when I was drilling. Drillers only have to execute, instructors had to know what foot to call the maneuver on, how far in advance to call the maneuver, and which maneuver to call. They also had to know all the different ways someone in the platoon could screw up their simple order and how to correct them.

This is the dilemma with leaders and teachers. You absolutely have to know your subject well, but in addition you have to know the mechanics of conveying your knowledge to other people. You have to know how to convey it via several different types of learning so the tactile, visual, and sensory learners all understand in their own way. Put another way, you have to have a pretty intimate knowledge of failure. This is often not something the “best and brightest” have experienced much or understand much. This doesn’t mean they can’t learn it though.

I’m a true believer that everything can be taught to a certain degree. I was not a good drawer when I first went to art school, but my learning curve was huge. I couldn’t believe how much, that I thought was just talent, could actually be taught. I was fascinated to learn in school that there was a method for solving ethical dilemmas too. Even non-linear thinking can be taught.

I’ve often wondered if part of teaching leaders is simply teaching them how to be teachers first. Leaders too need an intimate knowledge of failure and how others think. If you know how people can fail, it makes it easier to design instruction so they can’t fail, or so they can fail “safely” and learn.

A lot of what was brought up in this article parallels a book I read recently called What the best college teachers do by Ken Bain. It was recommended to me by the head instructor at the Army Command & General Staff College and it is an excellent read. He has all his instructors read it. The more I learn about good teaching, the more I feel I’m learning about good leading.

It’s a good article, worth reading. I’m hoping to blog a little more about design in the coming weeks, so stay tuned.

One of the basic ideas the article was trying to introduce was a recent study which showed that people who ruminate on things are prone to depression, but that rumination is a very good problem solving methodology. To quote the article:

“In the creative process, Andreasen says ‘one of the most important qualities is persistence…successful writers are like prizefighters who keep on getting hit but won’t go down. They’ll stick with it until it’s right.’

“…many forms of creativity benefit from the relentless focus it makes possible. ‘Unfortunately, this type of thinking is often inseparable from suffering. If you’re at the cutting edge, then you’re going to bleed.’”

The connections to creativity and writing were the parts that really intrigued me because I often struggle with being a writer. Writing is a very personal thing and in many ways you are putting a piece of yourself out there for others to criticize. Creative people, by nature, also often have the personalities, which are the most sensitive to criticism. So why do they do it? Because they have to. I can’t remember who said it, and I can’t find the notebook I wrote it in, but a writer was once asked why he wrote and his answer was “To save my life.” I feel that way a lot, and before I started writing this blog I would fill notebooks and scraps of paper with endless writing that no one ever saw….just because I had to. I had to get it out of my head and organize it and get it all to make sense. When I lived in Alaska, I struggled a lot and since I was on my own, I often worked things out by writing emails to no one in particular. I would write out everything I was thinking and then just delete it at the end. It was amazing how that simple act would make me feel better. It’s a lot like listening. People don’t need you to fix their problems, they often just need a way to get their thoughts out of their head so they can puzzle through them and find their own solution.

I guess that’s why I liked this article. It kind of explained the science behind the link between creativity and struggle. I named this blog Constructively Discontented because it was the best definition I’d heard to explain creative people. Being discontented does not often lead to happiness, but it does give you purpose and meaning and is probably responsible for some of the greatest achievements and acts of kindness in the world. I often say I have a little bit of Don Quixote in me…madly tilting at windmills thinking they’re dragons, but always with a noble purpose. My favorite line from Man of La Mancha is when the Don Quixote character says “…and the maddest of all, to see things as they are and not as they should be.” People often mistake my relentless need to make things better with being negative or never satisfied, which frustrates me because I’m not a negative person. On the contrary, I’m very much a person who wants to make the world a better place. I just don’t see how you do that by being happy with how things are.

Part of doing that is finding what you’re good at and using that in a positive way. I grew up reading books and so my strongest subjects were always English and History. I hated being good at those things. I wanted to be an astronaut and a pilot and English and History majors were not generally what they were looking for. I majored in science thinking it would make me a better pilot. Nine years after getting my science degree, I wrote an essay to get into graduate school about how flying is more like an English essay than a math problem. My writing and communication skills have gotten me farther than anything else in my career, and what I once hated as a kid I am now grateful to have. Reading and writing taught me how to think more constructively than science and math. My problem was seeing my skills as an inhibitor to what I wanted to do, rather than seeing how they could enhance and contribute to how I did whatever job I chose.

The article talks about writing and how it can actually help depressed people have shorter episodes of depression. Apparently writing is a way to speed up the rumination process. As the article states:

“…writing is a form of thinking, which enhances our natural problem-solving abilities.”

I love that line. I struggle to articulate to people why writing is so important, but that line sums up most of it. Too many people focus on the words and the rules of writing like it’s a math formula. The rules and words are important, but it’s the thinking that matters more. It’s a lot like flying. You can learn the rules and the techniques, but it’s often the thinking that distinguishes a good pilot from a great one. The article goes on to say:

“…negative moods lead to better decisions in complex situations. Eighty percent of writers met the formal diagnostic criteria for some form of depression.”

“…sadness correlates with clearer and more compelling sentences, and that negative moods ‘promote a more concrete, accommodative and ultimately more successful communication style.’”

“A creative writer is one for whom writing is a problem.”

While these observations are a little depressing in and of themselves if you are a writer, it is slightly heartening to know you’re not alone. Creativity is both a burden and a curse, like most things in life. People often don’t realize the cost that comes with being a creative person. I would not describe myself as a depressed person, but I do ruminate a lot and mull things over until I can drive myself crazy. I worry about things I shouldn’t and have a tendency to dwell. But in general, it makes me a better person. My persistence and focus have allowed me to achieve things that people with twice my talent cannot achieve.

One of my favorite books that I read in Alaska before taking a big kayak trip is called The Only Kayak by Kim Heacox, a park ranger who patrolled Glacier Bay in a kayak. It’s beautifully written and two of my favorite lines came to mind as a read this article:

“I was reminded that that greatest artists have the greatest doubts; that supreme confidence is granted to the less talented as a consolation prize.”

“It’s easy, after all, not to be a writer. Most people aren’t writers and very little harm comes to them”

It is easy, and safe, not to be a writer, but I think you miss out on one of the greatest parts of life. People often talk about how love is worth it even if it causes so much pain. I think writing can be the same way. Try it, struggle with it….you’ll be better for it.

I wanted to share one of my favorite TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) videos from www.ted.com.

I love this video for several different reasons. The first is that it shows how complicated problems in a field are often solved in places other than that field. When she asks mathematicians why they didn’t see hyperbolic geometry in sea slugs, they replied that not a lot of mathematicians stared at sea slugs. This is the power of having teams of people with all different skills and viewpoints to solve complex problems. Experts are often blinded by their own expertise.

Along those same lines, the second thing I love about this story is that it was a female mathematician who figured out the solution to a problem, which many male mathematicians said was impossible to solve. She was able to solve it using a form or art that her male colleagues probably never spent any time around…crochet. So, it was because she was a woman that she was able to solve it. When we look at the uproar caused by Larry Summers when he suggested that maybe male brains were better wired for math than female brains, you can see this narrowness of thinking. He may be right about that one specific thing, but I think he’s wrong that it matters in bringing more women into math. Women bring a different perspective and are able to see things their male colleagues cannot see, and vice versa. Making any new strides in innovation and pressing the limits of a field of study, requires people who don’t think like the experts. Bill Gates once told a room full of Saudi Arabian leaders that they will never lead the world in innovation if they continue to not utilize half their population (their women). We, also, should heed his warning.

This is one of the principle arguments for diversity. Diversity can often shake up the standard thinking and discover something new. It’s diversity of thought and background that matter more than race or gender diversity, but these things often come packaged together.

The military is especially prone to this myopia. We often pride ourselves in looking for the “right” type of people for military service. The test we all take to get into flight school has a personality test, which you can actually fail! I had to laugh when I got to flight school and saw all the different personalities there. There have been many studies done on what personality types are generally successful in the military and in certain fields, but I wonder if that has more to do with adapting to the environment rather than actually having the mental skills to do the job.

There was a study done some time ago where a researcher had Air Force Academy cadets take the Myers-Briggs personality test. He found a reasonable distribution of all 16 different personality types. Next he tested O-5s (Lieutenant Colonels) in the Army and Air Force and found a statistically significant difference between the cadets and the O-5s. Lastly, he tested O-7s (Generals) and found no statistically significant difference between the O-5s and O-7s, but there was a statistically significant difference between the cadets and the O-7s. He found that 56% of the O-7s were ISTJ and ESTJ which is the personality often associated with engineers and has a “don’t rock the boat” attitude towards change and innovation. His conclusion was that the creative personalities either left the service or were weeded out through the promotion system. I would guess more of the former, but there has been some suggestion that personalities can morph over time, leaving a third possibility. It raises an interesting question on whether diversity can change an environment, or whether the environment has to change first. It’s a little chicken and egg dilemma…which has to come first?

I wonder if the math and sciences have created an environment which does not foster innovation anymore. Is this why we’re falling behind? Many of the innovative design firms like IDEO have recognized the limitations of fields of science and engineering and created design teams that include engineers, sociologists, and designers. Each brings in a different view and together they come up with a better product. This is why I love design. Design comes out of many fields and can often be the common language between them. Unfortunately design has often been relegated to the school of the arts, but its roots are really in engineering, architecture, art and even medicine.

There is a great amount of worry right now about our ability to compete in the math, science and technology. It is a very legitimate worry. I just wonder if we will win the competition through creating more engineers and scientists. If most problems are solved outside the field, maybe we need to start introducing science, math and technology into the other fields of study and vice versa. It’s a knotty problem, but I think what this video illustrates is that we won’t solve the world’s toughest problems with a narrow field of experts. Design may be that common language that can unite seemingly uncommon fields.

Malcolm Nance Interview

Although I haven’t read his book yet, I thought what he had to say in this interview was intriguing. What Nance is suggesting is that we should treat Al-Qaeda has a cult and not some big time enemy. He says we should attack their ideology and discredit what they claim instead of trying to fight them with bombs and bullets.

He talks about how “unsexy” this approach is, but that the “sexy” things we’re doing are just giving Al-Qaeda more power than they’re worth. It got me thinking about that Abu Muquwama post I blogged about earlier. The military is about “sexy” stuff like bombs and bullets. We know how to fight traditional wars, but we can be pretty unimaginative when it comes to fighting wars in different ways. Chiefly this may be because by our very nature we must define people as our enemy and not criminals or a cult, but I think there is another element.

I’m asked a lot about my views on women in combat and I’ve had several debates with my male colleagues about it. One of the things I’m constantly struck by is the unimaginativeness of their arguments, but it makes it easier for me to have counterarguments prepared. The argument I always get is “they should have to pass the same physical tests that men do.” While I don’t completely disagree with their point, and I think there are women who would have no problem passing these tests, I’m always struck by how much importance people put on physical strength in fighting wars. There is no doubt that there is physical strength involved in carrying equipment and patrolling, but there is a lot more mental power needed (I run Ironmans and have beaten many strong guys because it is completely a mental game more than a physical one). Why is a PT test mandatory but not language skills? Why do we test peoples’ biceps, abs, and quads (the weakest muscles) and not their brains, hearts, and glutes (the strongest muscles). If you’re taught to go over an 8 foot wall over and over again, when you meet an 8 foot wall you’re going to go over it. If you have known you’re whole life that you can’t go over an 8 foot wall, you find smarter ways to go around it, under it, through it, etc. Enemies love predictability. Al-Qaeda wants us to go over that 8 foot wall…they’re counting on it.

So my answer to the guys when they give me the “physical test” excuse is “if you had a choice, would you want someone fluent in Arabic or Pashtun who could drag a 180 pound person, or someone who could just drag a 240 pound person?” I think I’d take the first and rely on the fact that we almost always work in teams and each person brings different skill sets and the whole point is to prevent anyone from having to be dragged.

The reason why this matters is that by having different people with different skills who frame problems differently, you can start fighting these battles in more logical and less predictable fashion. You can see this as a war of ideas and not a war of firepower. Nance calls it “Counterideology.”

Anyway, it’s an interesting idea and a good interview. Once I get a chance to dig into the book I’ll blog a little more about his basic idea and my thoughts.