January 12, 2025 • 25 mins
Exploring the balance between self-deception and reality in goal setting and navigating chaos in professional settings.
Show Notes:
- MIT Professional Education
- Creativity, Inc. (The Expanded Edition) by Ed Catmull and Amy Wallace
- Alvin Toffler
- High Output Management by Andrew S. Grove
- John Cutler (LinkedIn)
- The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Harry (00:00):
Self-deception is both a very positive thing and a very
negative thing.
And you could think of it in apositive light by thinking of it
in terms of goal setting as avery positive form of
self-deception, right?
A goal is this thing in thefuture that doesn't exist, so
you have to deceive yourselfinto imagining it existing in
order to be able to mobilizeyour energy and your resources
(00:24):
and your activities anddecisions and everything that's
necessary in order to realizethat goal.
You're listening to TractionHeroes.
Digging In to Get Results withHarry Max and Jorge Arango.
Jorge (00:44):
Harry, it's good to see you.
Harry (00:46):
That's a delight to see you too.
Jorge.
Jorge (00:49):
What's lighting you up these days, man?
Harry (00:51):
I just got back from a two day course in Boston at MIT.
The Sloan Business School hastheir executive education stuff.
And I'm not part of the programper se, but somebody sent me a
link to a course calledEmbracing the Unexpected
co-taught by, Hal Gregerson, anMIT lecturer, and Ed Catmull,
the founder and longtimepresident of Pixar Animation
(01:16):
Studios and eventually Disney.
And it was just an unbelievablygreat course, where he shared
his insights over the, last 30ish years on how to improve the
world through organizationalchange and helping people deal
with uncertainty and complexityand different time horizons and
whatnot.
So that's what's lighting me up.
And he updated the book (01:38):
if you haven't read Creativity Inc., I
would go get a new copy of theexpanded version and read it.
I'm about halfway through.
It's just amazing.
Jorge (01:50):
I'm excited to know that the name of the workshop that
you went to was Embracing theUnexpected because I've selected
an excerpt of a book here that Ithink deals with this idea.
Harry (02:02):
Ha! I love that.
Jorge (02:02):
And you may have fresh insights coming off this
experience.
And what I'm gonna do is, Ithink I'm gonna read this first
before telling you what book itis and who the author is.
Okay?
So I'm quoting here.
Harry (02:14):
Yeah.
Jorge (02:15):
"Your company has no choice but to operate in an
environment shaped by the forcesof globalization and the
information revolution.
Companies today basically havetwo choices.
Adapt or die.
Some have died in front of oureyes.
Others are struggling with theadaptation.
As they struggle, the methods ofdoing business that worked very
(02:37):
well for them for decades arebecoming history.
Companies that have hadgenerations of employees growing
up under a no layoff policy arenow dumping 10,000 people at a
time onto the street.
Unfortunately, that's all partof the process of adaptation.
All managers in such companiesneed to adapt to the new
environment.
(02:59):
"What are the rules of the newenvironment?
First, everything happensfaster.
Second, anything that can bedone, will be done, if not by
you, then by someone else.
Let there be nomisunderstanding: these changes
lead to a less kind, lessgentle, and less predictable
workplace.
(03:20):
Again, as a manager in such aworkplace, you need to develop a
higher tolerance for disorder.
Now, you should still not acceptdisorder.
In fact, you should do your bestto drive what's around you to
order." I'm gonna skip a littlebit now.
"You should be prepared for theshockwaves engendered by a brand
(03:44):
new technique pioneered bysomeone you had never even heard
of before.
You need to try to do theimpossible, to anticipate the
unexpected.
And when the unexpected happens,you should double your efforts
to make order from the disorderit creates in your life.
The motto I'm advocating is letchaos reign, then reign in
(04:08):
chaos."
Harry (04:10):
Tell me that is not Alvin Toffler.
Jorge (04:13):
It's not Alvin Toffler.
This is from a book by AndyGrove and I think it's coming up
on thirty years; I think it cameout in 1995.
It's called High OutputManagement.
Harry (04:24):
Oh yeah.
That's a great book.
Jorge (04:26):
I'm really drawn to this idea, particularly in this year
where, at least in the fieldthat I have most visibility
into, which is user experiencedesign, there's been a lot of
upheaval.
And when he writes aboutcompanies...
the phrase he uses is"dumping10,000 people at a time onto the
(04:47):
street." We've seen a lot ofthat happening in our field, and
it is a time of great upheaval.
And this notion that we somehowneed to balance chaos with order
seems very appropriate for ourtime.
And part of the reason I wantedto hear your take on this is
(05:08):
that in some ways, I think yourbook is about reigning in chaos
and focusing on the right thing.
What does this excerpt bring upfor you?
Harry (05:22):
It brings up a topic that I've been discussing with John
Cutler.
I don't know if you follow hiswork at all.
Just a brilliant guy and one ofthe people I look to in terms of
being able to articulate some ofthe central ideas behind how to
think about prioritization.
And he's been pushing at theedges of a topic that I called
(05:45):
out in a call with him.
I said,"This is really aboutcoherence." The idea that there
are things that are incoherentand then there are things that
are coherent.
A laser is a coherent lightbeam.
And It's very focused and verydirect.
And incoherent is very diffuse.
When I hear that,"let chaosreign and then reign in chaos,"
(06:09):
what I hear very much wascentral to not only the approach
that I take in prioritization,but also, what I was deeply
immersed in the workshop.
It's about being able to allowyourself to focus on the things
that are required in order tostay on top of what's necessary
(06:29):
to survive and thrive in themoment today, day to day,
running the business or theorganization, and also in that
staying attuned to what are thesofter, quiet signals of what's
not working or what's lurking inthe background that might impede
or torpedo progress whilesimultaneously understanding
(06:53):
that you have to point into thefuture sometimes quite far and
make sure that you arecontinually investing in the
insight development andexperimentation and work that's
required in order to pull thatincoherence together that chaos
together into a future that youco-create with the activities
(07:17):
and the people that you'reengaged in.
And so it's this set of thingsthat you have to do along
multiple time horizons that haveto be done at the same time,
which is hard to wrap one's mindaround.
But you have to do the thingsthat you need to do now, if you
don't stuff doesn't work.
And if you don't stay focused onthe future five to seven to ten
(07:41):
years out certainly in a largeorganization and arguably in
almost any organization itbecomes very difficult to end up
going to a place where you wouldprefer to have gone.
Because it's all about thisnotion of where you are in the
(08:04):
present, it's easy to know wherethe stepping stones are.
And as you move into the future,into a greater degree of
uncertainty, you start to haveto rely on to some extent faith
that you're gonna put your footdown and you're gonna land on
something solid.
And as you get further andfurther into the future,
(08:24):
sometimes you have to makefairly big jumps.
And sometimes those jumps arewrong, but you won't know
they're wrong unless you gothere.
And talking about the kinds ofchoices that leadership at
Nvidia made, for example, tospeed up its clock to six month
(08:46):
development release cyclesrather than the typical very
long chip design developmentrelease cycles that exist in the
industry, is an example of howNvidia pursued a long-term
vision while allowing chaos toreign in the moment.
So those are just some initialthoughts that I'm having about
(09:07):
two ideas that were discussed inthe MIT course that I would've
discussed here had I not takenthat course, which is about
knowing that you have to managemultiple timelines and multiple
horizons and step into a futurethat becomes increasingly
uncertain, but never take youreye off the work that allows you
(09:32):
to keep going day to day, butkeep shaping the future that
you're hoping will, to a greateror somewhat lesser extent,
become real over a longer termtime horizon as you move into
that uncertainty.
Jorge (09:52):
Let's acknowledge that there is tension there between
keeping your eye on the longertimeframe, bigger picture
understanding of where thingsare going, and you also talked
about the fact that you do havethese near-term commitments,
requirements.
I think Andy Warhol talked aboutbringing home the bacon, right?
Harry (10:14):
Exactly.
Jorge (10:14):
Like, you gotta bring home the bacon, right?
So, you have to be able to keepyour focus on both of those time
perspectives simultaneously.
All the while dealing with thefact that you are in a...
Grove's phrase was,"less kind,less gentle, less predictable
(10:37):
workplace," which is a source ofanxiety.
When you were talking about yourconversation with John, you said
that there's work that we needto do, and I imagine that
there's work at the level of theorganization, but there's also
work at the level of theindividual, right?
What kind of work, do you needto do in order to act skillfully
(10:57):
under these conditions?
Harry (11:00):
A couple thoughts come to mind.
One is that people....
It's a crazy topic,self-deception, right?
You hear the term self-deceptionand naturally you're probably
gonna think of it in pejorativekind of negative terms, right?
And yet, you think of somebodylike Steve Jobs.
(11:22):
I'll use him as an example of avisionary, right?
Self-deception is what allowedhim to create a vision and a
reality distortion field in thefuture, and then navigate toward
it.
Self-deception is both a verypositive thing and a very
negative thing.
And you could think of it in apositive light by thinking of it
in terms of goal setting as avery positive form of
(11:45):
self-deception, right?
A goal is this thing in thefuture that doesn't exist, so
you have to deceive yourselfinto imagining it existing in
order to be able to mobilizeyour energy and your resources
and your activities anddecisions and everything that's
necessary in order to realizethat goal.
And at the individual level,there's this notion of being
(12:10):
able to hold a paradox.
It's being able to hold twothings as true.
One is the truth of your currentsituation, the realities that
you're dealing with day to day,the good and bad.
But the other thing you have tohold as true is this possible
future or even possible futures.
(12:30):
The idea to be able to hold twothings together that are in
competition, that areeffectively paradoxes as both
possible truths at the sametime.
And in this case, those opposingtruths are the realities of your
day-to-day and the possiblefuture that you want to create
(12:53):
and what's necessary to getthere.
That's like the work, that'swhere hope comes from.
That's where goal setting comesfrom.
That's where having strongconvictions about what's
possible comes from.
It's this idea that theseconflicting realities can be
true at the same time.
One is an imaginary reality thatyou have to hold is true as a
(13:15):
sense of possibility in thefuture.
And the other is the presentreality, which is very concrete
that you have to interact within order to make it happen.
Jorge (13:25):
I would imagine that self-deception is useful up to
the point where you startbelieving your own press.
Because you do have to have aclean read on reality if you are
to act skillfully, no?
Harry (13:40):
That is that individual work.
The individual work is beingable to imagine this possible
future and hold it as a reality,and yet not be sucked into this
seductive sense that the presentfacts of your current situation
are not true.
You have to accept the facts ofyour current situation.
(14:02):
A friend of mine whose fatherwas a minister used to say,"The
facts are friendly." The factsdon't have an emotional, valence
It's your reaction to thosefacts.
So that's the crux of thisissue.
You have to maintain afact-based objective sense of
(14:24):
where you are in reality intime, while simultaneously being
able to imagine or deceiveyourself into imagining a
possible future that you willhave to also act on today or it
won't happen.
Jorge (14:42):
Maybe the word deception is triggering me a little bit.
How about this?
You could take the facts andhave a clean read on the facts
as clean as you can have andframe them in different ways.
And some framings might lead youto despair, some framings might
lead you to act in positiveways.
(15:06):
And part of what I'm hearing atleast is that the inner work
entails losing the kind ofinnate capacity that we have to
assign emotional valence to thefacts so that we can take what
we're observing and I'm thinkingof The Hitchhiker's Guide to the
(15:30):
Galaxy and the big don't panicthing–it's like,"Don't panic!"
Right?
Choose to frame the factsdifferently and maybe see where
that takes you.
Harry (15:39):
I like how you responded to the pejorative notion of
self-deception.
Because when I sayself-deception and hear it, it
doesn't have a pejorativemeaning to me anymore.
I think of it in terms of, if Ican't deceive myself into seeing
this possible future, I won't beable to convince other people
it's possible.
Everything will be hedging abet, everything will be...
I'll be qualifying everything: "If it were possible, or if we (16:02):
undefined
could get there," rather thansaying,"This is what I see." And
so the notion of framing, Ithink really helps remove maybe
even remove that term from theconversation so that it shifts
back to the idea of imagination.
(16:25):
It shifts back to the idea ofgoals.
It shifts back to the idea ofpossible futures or even
possible selves.
Jorge (16:34):
The reason that I think "deception" triggered me is that
there might be a trap there attwo different levels.
One level is, you might go outof your way to limit your inputs
to those that confirm yourhypothesis so as to not fall out
(16:56):
of your deception zone.
As an information architect, Ivalue having a clean read on the
context, and it's something thatI would want to keep.
So that's one level at which itconcerns me.
(17:16):
But the other level is that itmight suggest something like the
law of attraction or wishfulthinking.
It's like,"Well, if I deceivemyself enough, I'll achieve the
coherence that you're talkingabout.
I'll focus the laser beam enoughto make this happen." And maybe
(17:37):
you do make it happen, but didyou do it at the expense of your
ability to have a clean read onthe facts?
Harry (17:45):
So I love where you're going with this and here's why.
I got caught up in the languageof this, and what I was trying
to get across was the magic ofthis.
The work at the individual levelis living in the middle.
It's not going all the way outto the edge and fully deceiving
(18:08):
yourself.
And it's not staying locked intothe presentism of current
perceived reality.
It's somehow this interplaybetween the possible slowly
unfurling reality that could bewith the ever present challenges
(18:32):
of the grit of what's going onin the moment.
And it's that in-between spacethat is that personal work.
It's being comfortable beinguncomfortable in that squishy
space that makes it more likelythat you'll be able to realize a
(18:54):
future that doesn't necessarilyexist and can only be imagined.
Jorge (19:03):
Let's put it this way: among many possible ways
forward, your ability to focusto achieve this coherence that
we're talking about enoughcoherence to get your wood lined
up behind your arrow, bydefinition, your limited time,
(19:24):
resources, energy, etc.
pointed in a direction that willmake it possible for one of
those possible futures to becomeactual, and ideally the possible
future that you have framed asthe most desirable one.
And It sounds like there isinternal work that needs to be
done here, and I would like tobring it back to actionable
(19:48):
things that folks listening inmight do to achieve that level
of coherence in their framing sothat they can become traction
heroes.
Harry (20:03):
Yeah, I love that.
And to me, there are reallyamong all of the hundreds of
tools at our disposal, asdesigners, information
architects, as entrepreneurs, astraction heroes in the world, in
our own mind anyway,understanding how to write a
(20:23):
problem statement and writingproblem statements, not just
necessarily problems per se, butalso opportunities.
Like how do you succinctlyarticulate what you're trying to
go toward or what you're tryingto get away from and why?
And by a succinct, I mean ashort paragraph.
And when you can do that, itputs you in a position of
(20:48):
spelling out a compelling reasonfor change.
Because absent of being able tospell out a compelling reason
for change, why do anythingdifferent?
I use a form that's in my book.
It's called an Outcome Driver.
It's a three sentence thing, andit's a very succinct statement
of the current situation.
It's a very succinct statementof the problem or opportunity,
(21:10):
and a very succinct statement ofhow it's bad or good.
And you tie those together, andyou have an outcome driver,
which is in effect a very shortproblem statement.
And two or three or four ofthose, if they're lined up, they
point in a direction of acompelling reason to do
something different.
And that gets you half of theequation.
(21:33):
And the other is, what is thedesired outcome?
And that has a format.
There's seven questions.
I'm not gonna go into all ofthem right now'cause it might be
too much, but the idea is thecombination of a set of outcome
drivers and a desired outcome,which answers the question, what
do you want?
Who wants it?
(21:53):
How will they know when theyhave it?
across a spectrum of, what wouldbe barely sufficient to what
would be hopelessly idealisticand beyond.
When you have those two things,you have a painting of a future,
and that future painting becomesa bookmark for a possible
(22:14):
future.
So for me, working with people,those are two of the most
fundamental tools I would wantpeople to get comfortable with
to spell out how they want theworld to be different and how
would they know if they had it.
Jorge (22:32):
I love this.
My preferred definition ofdesign is: design is the means
through which we make thepossible tangible.
Harry (22:41):
Totally.
Jorge (22:43):
And it feels to me like this exercise is about making a
possible future tangible and inso doing, bringing it closer to
reality, right?
Because once it's more tangible,first of all, the process of
doing that forces you to thinkmore rigorously, maybe?
I mean that might be overstatingit, but it at least forces you
(23:05):
to think through what the shapeof this future might be, what
conditions might be like once ithappens and what the context
might need to be to make thatcome about.
So it almost like startssuggesting the plan, which,
might be maybe, again, notself-deception, but maybe it's
(23:25):
self-confidence, right?
Once you have a plan, now youare more likely to be able to
line up your efforts and achievethe coherency that you were
aspiring for earlier.
Harry (23:35):
Yeah, I think that's right.
And I actually think the plan isthe fourth step.
I think there's a third step.
So if the outcome driver orproblem statement is step one
and the desired outcome to painta picture of what's wanted is
step two, the step three beforethe plan is actually answering
the question,"What would have tohave been true to realize this
(23:59):
future?" And then you start withthat in the future and you work
back to the present.
I call it back planning.
And then once you know whatwould have to have been true and
you spell it out in words asstated events in the past, not
activities that are happening,but rather a set of recursive
(24:22):
outcomes from the present to thepast, then you can look at what
activities would you have toengage in order to realize that
possible future that becomesyour plan.
Jorge (24:34):
Well, Harry, I'm very inspired by this conversation.
This is very useful.
Thank you so much.
I look forward to having thenext one.
Harry (24:43):
Oh, this is just so much fun.
Thank you so much, Jorge.
Narrator (24:50):
Thank you for listening to Traction Heroes
with Harry Max and Jorge Arango.
Check out the show notes attractionheroes.com and if you
enjoyed the show, please leaveus a rating in Apple's Podcasts
app.
Thanks.
Self-deception is both a very positive thing and a very
negative thing.
And you could think of it in apositive light by thinking of it
in terms of goal setting as avery positive form of
self-deception, right?
A goal is this thing in thefuture that doesn't exist, so
you have to deceive yourselfinto imagining it existing in
order to be able to mobilizeyour energy and your resources
(00:24):
and your activities anddecisions and everything that's
necessary in order to realizethat goal.
You're listening to TractionHeroes.
Digging In to Get Results withHarry Max and Jorge Arango.
Jorge (00:44):
Harry, it's good to see you.
Harry (00:46):
That's a delight to see you too.
Jorge.
Jorge (00:49):
What's lighting you up these days, man?
Harry (00:51):
I just got back from a two day course in Boston at MIT.
The Sloan Business School hastheir executive education stuff.
And I'm not part of the programper se, but somebody sent me a
link to a course calledEmbracing the Unexpected
co-taught by, Hal Gregerson, anMIT lecturer, and Ed Catmull,
the founder and longtimepresident of Pixar Animation
(01:16):
Studios and eventually Disney.
And it was just an unbelievablygreat course, where he shared
his insights over the, last 30ish years on how to improve the
world through organizationalchange and helping people deal
with uncertainty and complexityand different time horizons and
whatnot.
So that's what's lighting me up.
And he updated the book (01:38):
if you haven't read Creativity Inc., I
would go get a new copy of theexpanded version and read it.
I'm about halfway through.
It's just amazing.
Jorge (01:50):
I'm excited to know that the name of the workshop that
you went to was Embracing theUnexpected because I've selected
an excerpt of a book here that Ithink deals with this idea.
Harry (02:02):
Ha! I love that.
Jorge (02:02):
And you may have fresh insights coming off this
experience.
And what I'm gonna do is, Ithink I'm gonna read this first
before telling you what book itis and who the author is.
Okay?
So I'm quoting here.
Harry (02:14):
Yeah.
Jorge (02:15):
"Your company has no choice but to operate in an
environment shaped by the forcesof globalization and the
information revolution.
Companies today basically havetwo choices.
Adapt or die.
Some have died in front of oureyes.
Others are struggling with theadaptation.
As they struggle, the methods ofdoing business that worked very
(02:37):
well for them for decades arebecoming history.
Companies that have hadgenerations of employees growing
up under a no layoff policy arenow dumping 10,000 people at a
time onto the street.
Unfortunately, that's all partof the process of adaptation.
All managers in such companiesneed to adapt to the new
environment.
(02:59):
"What are the rules of the newenvironment?
First, everything happensfaster.
Second, anything that can bedone, will be done, if not by
you, then by someone else.
Let there be nomisunderstanding: these changes
lead to a less kind, lessgentle, and less predictable
workplace.
(03:20):
Again, as a manager in such aworkplace, you need to develop a
higher tolerance for disorder.
Now, you should still not acceptdisorder.
In fact, you should do your bestto drive what's around you to
order." I'm gonna skip a littlebit now.
"You should be prepared for theshockwaves engendered by a brand
(03:44):
new technique pioneered bysomeone you had never even heard
of before.
You need to try to do theimpossible, to anticipate the
unexpected.
And when the unexpected happens,you should double your efforts
to make order from the disorderit creates in your life.
The motto I'm advocating is letchaos reign, then reign in
(04:08):
chaos."
Harry (04:10):
Tell me that is not Alvin Toffler.
Jorge (04:13):
It's not Alvin Toffler.
This is from a book by AndyGrove and I think it's coming up
on thirty years; I think it cameout in 1995.
It's called High OutputManagement.
Harry (04:24):
Oh yeah.
That's a great book.
Jorge (04:26):
I'm really drawn to this idea, particularly in this year
where, at least in the fieldthat I have most visibility
into, which is user experiencedesign, there's been a lot of
upheaval.
And when he writes aboutcompanies...
the phrase he uses is"dumping10,000 people at a time onto the
(04:47):
street." We've seen a lot ofthat happening in our field, and
it is a time of great upheaval.
And this notion that we somehowneed to balance chaos with order
seems very appropriate for ourtime.
And part of the reason I wantedto hear your take on this is
(05:08):
that in some ways, I think yourbook is about reigning in chaos
and focusing on the right thing.
What does this excerpt bring upfor you?
Harry (05:22):
It brings up a topic that I've been discussing with John
Cutler.
I don't know if you follow hiswork at all.
Just a brilliant guy and one ofthe people I look to in terms of
being able to articulate some ofthe central ideas behind how to
think about prioritization.
And he's been pushing at theedges of a topic that I called
(05:45):
out in a call with him.
I said,"This is really aboutcoherence." The idea that there
are things that are incoherentand then there are things that
are coherent.
A laser is a coherent lightbeam.
And It's very focused and verydirect.
And incoherent is very diffuse.
When I hear that,"let chaosreign and then reign in chaos,"
(06:09):
what I hear very much wascentral to not only the approach
that I take in prioritization,but also, what I was deeply
immersed in the workshop.
It's about being able to allowyourself to focus on the things
that are required in order tostay on top of what's necessary
(06:29):
to survive and thrive in themoment today, day to day,
running the business or theorganization, and also in that
staying attuned to what are thesofter, quiet signals of what's
not working or what's lurking inthe background that might impede
or torpedo progress whilesimultaneously understanding
(06:53):
that you have to point into thefuture sometimes quite far and
make sure that you arecontinually investing in the
insight development andexperimentation and work that's
required in order to pull thatincoherence together that chaos
together into a future that youco-create with the activities
(07:17):
and the people that you'reengaged in.
And so it's this set of thingsthat you have to do along
multiple time horizons that haveto be done at the same time,
which is hard to wrap one's mindaround.
But you have to do the thingsthat you need to do now, if you
don't stuff doesn't work.
And if you don't stay focused onthe future five to seven to ten
(07:41):
years out certainly in a largeorganization and arguably in
almost any organization itbecomes very difficult to end up
going to a place where you wouldprefer to have gone.
Because it's all about thisnotion of where you are in the
(08:04):
present, it's easy to know wherethe stepping stones are.
And as you move into the future,into a greater degree of
uncertainty, you start to haveto rely on to some extent faith
that you're gonna put your footdown and you're gonna land on
something solid.
And as you get further andfurther into the future,
(08:24):
sometimes you have to makefairly big jumps.
And sometimes those jumps arewrong, but you won't know
they're wrong unless you gothere.
And talking about the kinds ofchoices that leadership at
Nvidia made, for example, tospeed up its clock to six month
(08:46):
development release cyclesrather than the typical very
long chip design developmentrelease cycles that exist in the
industry, is an example of howNvidia pursued a long-term
vision while allowing chaos toreign in the moment.
So those are just some initialthoughts that I'm having about
(09:07):
two ideas that were discussed inthe MIT course that I would've
discussed here had I not takenthat course, which is about
knowing that you have to managemultiple timelines and multiple
horizons and step into a futurethat becomes increasingly
uncertain, but never take youreye off the work that allows you
(09:32):
to keep going day to day, butkeep shaping the future that
you're hoping will, to a greateror somewhat lesser extent,
become real over a longer termtime horizon as you move into
that uncertainty.
Jorge (09:52):
Let's acknowledge that there is tension there between
keeping your eye on the longertimeframe, bigger picture
understanding of where thingsare going, and you also talked
about the fact that you do havethese near-term commitments,
requirements.
I think Andy Warhol talked aboutbringing home the bacon, right?
Harry (10:14):
Exactly.
Jorge (10:14):
Like, you gotta bring home the bacon, right?
So, you have to be able to keepyour focus on both of those time
perspectives simultaneously.
All the while dealing with thefact that you are in a...
Grove's phrase was,"less kind,less gentle, less predictable
(10:37):
workplace," which is a source ofanxiety.
When you were talking about yourconversation with John, you said
that there's work that we needto do, and I imagine that
there's work at the level of theorganization, but there's also
work at the level of theindividual, right?
What kind of work, do you needto do in order to act skillfully
(10:57):
under these conditions?
Harry (11:00):
A couple thoughts come to mind.
One is that people....
It's a crazy topic,self-deception, right?
You hear the term self-deceptionand naturally you're probably
gonna think of it in pejorativekind of negative terms, right?
And yet, you think of somebodylike Steve Jobs.
(11:22):
I'll use him as an example of avisionary, right?
Self-deception is what allowedhim to create a vision and a
reality distortion field in thefuture, and then navigate toward
it.
Self-deception is both a verypositive thing and a very
negative thing.
And you could think of it in apositive light by thinking of it
in terms of goal setting as avery positive form of
(11:45):
self-deception, right?
A goal is this thing in thefuture that doesn't exist, so
you have to deceive yourselfinto imagining it existing in
order to be able to mobilizeyour energy and your resources
and your activities anddecisions and everything that's
necessary in order to realizethat goal.
And at the individual level,there's this notion of being
(12:10):
able to hold a paradox.
It's being able to hold twothings as true.
One is the truth of your currentsituation, the realities that
you're dealing with day to day,the good and bad.
But the other thing you have tohold as true is this possible
future or even possible futures.
(12:30):
The idea to be able to hold twothings together that are in
competition, that areeffectively paradoxes as both
possible truths at the sametime.
And in this case, those opposingtruths are the realities of your
day-to-day and the possiblefuture that you want to create
(12:53):
and what's necessary to getthere.
That's like the work, that'swhere hope comes from.
That's where goal setting comesfrom.
That's where having strongconvictions about what's
possible comes from.
It's this idea that theseconflicting realities can be
true at the same time.
One is an imaginary reality thatyou have to hold is true as a
(13:15):
sense of possibility in thefuture.
And the other is the presentreality, which is very concrete
that you have to interact within order to make it happen.
Jorge (13:25):
I would imagine that self-deception is useful up to
the point where you startbelieving your own press.
Because you do have to have aclean read on reality if you are
to act skillfully, no?
Harry (13:40):
That is that individual work.
The individual work is beingable to imagine this possible
future and hold it as a reality,and yet not be sucked into this
seductive sense that the presentfacts of your current situation
are not true.
You have to accept the facts ofyour current situation.
(14:02):
A friend of mine whose fatherwas a minister used to say,"The
facts are friendly." The factsdon't have an emotional, valence
It's your reaction to thosefacts.
So that's the crux of thisissue.
You have to maintain afact-based objective sense of
(14:24):
where you are in reality intime, while simultaneously being
able to imagine or deceiveyourself into imagining a
possible future that you willhave to also act on today or it
won't happen.
Jorge (14:42):
Maybe the word deception is triggering me a little bit.
How about this?
You could take the facts andhave a clean read on the facts
as clean as you can have andframe them in different ways.
And some framings might lead youto despair, some framings might
lead you to act in positiveways.
(15:06):
And part of what I'm hearing atleast is that the inner work
entails losing the kind ofinnate capacity that we have to
assign emotional valence to thefacts so that we can take what
we're observing and I'm thinkingof The Hitchhiker's Guide to the
(15:30):
Galaxy and the big don't panicthing–it's like,"Don't panic!"
Right?
Choose to frame the factsdifferently and maybe see where
that takes you.
Harry (15:39):
I like how you responded to the pejorative notion of
self-deception.
Because when I sayself-deception and hear it, it
doesn't have a pejorativemeaning to me anymore.
I think of it in terms of, if Ican't deceive myself into seeing
this possible future, I won't beable to convince other people
it's possible.
Everything will be hedging abet, everything will be...
I'll be qualifying everything: "If it were possible, or if we (16:02):
undefined
could get there," rather thansaying,"This is what I see." And
so the notion of framing, Ithink really helps remove maybe
even remove that term from theconversation so that it shifts
back to the idea of imagination.
(16:25):
It shifts back to the idea ofgoals.
It shifts back to the idea ofpossible futures or even
possible selves.
Jorge (16:34):
The reason that I think "deception" triggered me is that
there might be a trap there attwo different levels.
One level is, you might go outof your way to limit your inputs
to those that confirm yourhypothesis so as to not fall out
(16:56):
of your deception zone.
As an information architect, Ivalue having a clean read on the
context, and it's something thatI would want to keep.
So that's one level at which itconcerns me.
(17:16):
But the other level is that itmight suggest something like the
law of attraction or wishfulthinking.
It's like,"Well, if I deceivemyself enough, I'll achieve the
coherence that you're talkingabout.
I'll focus the laser beam enoughto make this happen." And maybe
(17:37):
you do make it happen, but didyou do it at the expense of your
ability to have a clean read onthe facts?
Harry (17:45):
So I love where you're going with this and here's why.
I got caught up in the languageof this, and what I was trying
to get across was the magic ofthis.
The work at the individual levelis living in the middle.
It's not going all the way outto the edge and fully deceiving
(18:08):
yourself.
And it's not staying locked intothe presentism of current
perceived reality.
It's somehow this interplaybetween the possible slowly
unfurling reality that could bewith the ever present challenges
(18:32):
of the grit of what's going onin the moment.
And it's that in-between spacethat is that personal work.
It's being comfortable beinguncomfortable in that squishy
space that makes it more likelythat you'll be able to realize a
(18:54):
future that doesn't necessarilyexist and can only be imagined.
Jorge (19:03):
Let's put it this way: among many possible ways
forward, your ability to focusto achieve this coherence that
we're talking about enoughcoherence to get your wood lined
up behind your arrow, bydefinition, your limited time,
(19:24):
resources, energy, etc.
pointed in a direction that willmake it possible for one of
those possible futures to becomeactual, and ideally the possible
future that you have framed asthe most desirable one.
And It sounds like there isinternal work that needs to be
done here, and I would like tobring it back to actionable
(19:48):
things that folks listening inmight do to achieve that level
of coherence in their framing sothat they can become traction
heroes.
Harry (20:03):
Yeah, I love that.
And to me, there are reallyamong all of the hundreds of
tools at our disposal, asdesigners, information
architects, as entrepreneurs, astraction heroes in the world, in
our own mind anyway,understanding how to write a
(20:23):
problem statement and writingproblem statements, not just
necessarily problems per se, butalso opportunities.
Like how do you succinctlyarticulate what you're trying to
go toward or what you're tryingto get away from and why?
And by a succinct, I mean ashort paragraph.
And when you can do that, itputs you in a position of
(20:48):
spelling out a compelling reasonfor change.
Because absent of being able tospell out a compelling reason
for change, why do anythingdifferent?
I use a form that's in my book.
It's called an Outcome Driver.
It's a three sentence thing, andit's a very succinct statement
of the current situation.
It's a very succinct statementof the problem or opportunity,
(21:10):
and a very succinct statement ofhow it's bad or good.
And you tie those together, andyou have an outcome driver,
which is in effect a very shortproblem statement.
And two or three or four ofthose, if they're lined up, they
point in a direction of acompelling reason to do
something different.
And that gets you half of theequation.
(21:33):
And the other is, what is thedesired outcome?
And that has a format.
There's seven questions.
I'm not gonna go into all ofthem right now'cause it might be
too much, but the idea is thecombination of a set of outcome
drivers and a desired outcome,which answers the question, what
do you want?
Who wants it?
(21:53):
How will they know when theyhave it?
across a spectrum of, what wouldbe barely sufficient to what
would be hopelessly idealisticand beyond.
When you have those two things,you have a painting of a future,
and that future painting becomesa bookmark for a possible
(22:14):
future.
So for me, working with people,those are two of the most
fundamental tools I would wantpeople to get comfortable with
to spell out how they want theworld to be different and how
would they know if they had it.
Jorge (22:32):
I love this.
My preferred definition ofdesign is: design is the means
through which we make thepossible tangible.
Harry (22:41):
Totally.
Jorge (22:43):
And it feels to me like this exercise is about making a
possible future tangible and inso doing, bringing it closer to
reality, right?
Because once it's more tangible,first of all, the process of
doing that forces you to thinkmore rigorously, maybe?
I mean that might be overstatingit, but it at least forces you
(23:05):
to think through what the shapeof this future might be, what
conditions might be like once ithappens and what the context
might need to be to make thatcome about.
So it almost like startssuggesting the plan, which,
might be maybe, again, notself-deception, but maybe it's
(23:25):
self-confidence, right?
Once you have a plan, now youare more likely to be able to
line up your efforts and achievethe coherency that you were
aspiring for earlier.
Harry (23:35):
Yeah, I think that's right.
And I actually think the plan isthe fourth step.
I think there's a third step.
So if the outcome driver orproblem statement is step one
and the desired outcome to painta picture of what's wanted is
step two, the step three beforethe plan is actually answering
the question,"What would have tohave been true to realize this
(23:59):
future?" And then you start withthat in the future and you work
back to the present.
I call it back planning.
And then once you know whatwould have to have been true and
you spell it out in words asstated events in the past, not
activities that are happening,but rather a set of recursive
(24:22):
outcomes from the present to thepast, then you can look at what
activities would you have toengage in order to realize that
possible future that becomesyour plan.
Jorge (24:34):
Well, Harry, I'm very inspired by this conversation.
This is very useful.
Thank you so much.
I look forward to having thenext one.
Harry (24:43):
Oh, this is just so much fun.
Thank you so much, Jorge.
Narrator (24:50):
Thank you for listening to Traction Heroes
with Harry Max and Jorge Arango.
Check out the show notes attractionheroes.com and if you
enjoyed the show, please leaveus a rating in Apple's Podcasts
app.
Thanks.
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