The Jakarta Post, 16 July 2006
In the early days of Kayee’s life in Jakarta, she has a ‘bug’: She loves Chinese fast food, but could not find it in Jakarta. She started to ask around about the possibility of opening up a Cantonese style noodle shop. She had great discussions with friends about how the restaurant would look, but like in most cases that you can perhaps relate with, the conversations stopped there.
About a year later, she discovered a new restaurant in town – specializing in Chinese fast-food; a restaurant that can whip up her comfort food at affordable prices. Her initial reaction was ‘but that was my idea’. But was it her idea? She didn’t do anything with the idea – but someone else did and turned the idea into a big prosperous business. The business card of the restaurant now proudly proclaims branches in most of the major cities in Indonesia.
Gosh, as if that doesn’t sound too familiar already. Well here is a short article to convince you that something can be done, if you needed more convincing. The message here is straightforward and something that Kayee’s friend Ben commonly reminds himself: “ideas are cheap without action.”
Here is another one, if just to prove that this happens all too often than not. Kayee was inspired by her observation that Indonesian people love to drink lemon tea and fizzy drinks. Working on the principle of combining old ideas to make new ones, she thought “why not combine the two?” – carbonated lemon tea.
Eventually, she found the exact drink on sale in supermarkets. Someone else’s imagination obviously took them down the same path as Kayee’s had, except that someone else added the creative ingredients of knowledge, motivation, hard work, persistence, creating and following a plan of action to realize an ‘internal image’ into ‘external reality’.
We have just finished reading “The Creative Economy” by John Howkins in which he describes “how people make money from ideas”. Ideas, being intellectual properties, “belong to someone”. Now, even the most common description of intellectual properties, which includes patents, amongst others, “… are not issued for an idea, but for a specific device, process, or machine that is presumably workable…” (World Book Dictionary).
Well, here is something practical that could bring home the message. Thomas Edison is famous for ‘inventing’ the light bulb, but not many people know that it wasn’t his idea in the first place (the idea belonged to Humphry Davy, an English chemist who in 1809, made the first arc lamp). In 1880, more than 70 years after the idea was born, Edison was granted a patent for his light bulb. Little known is that Edison’s light bulb evolved from a 1875 patent he purchased from other inventors, Henry Woodward and Matthew Evans.
Along the way to receiving a patent for his light bulb, Edison famously ‘failed’ over a thousand times and famously persisted until he arrived at a workable design. We can say that Edison embodied the ‘creative attitude’ of daring to fail and according to Torrance (1995) who quoted Chuck Jones: “probably the only trait that is characteristic of all creative people is persistence.”
In 1892, Edison’s company, the Edison General Electric Company merged with the Thomson-Houston Company led by Charles A. Coffin, to form the General Electric Company, nowadays known as GE, the enormous multinational conglomerate. Edison enjoyed financial success from his many inventions because of his persistence in working on ideas – even when he did not originate them.
Since the patent was granted to Edison, we can translate this to mean that it’s people who put ideas into action – people who make ideas work – who have real claim to ownership of ideas. As most of us know, the joy of the ‘aha’ moment of being enlightened with an idea is most often than not followed by a time of hard work and persistence in the realization of an idea. As Edison succinctly puts it “Genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration.”
We tend to agree with Dr. Ruth Noller, Professor Emeritus of the International Center for Studies in Creativity, who defined creativity as a function of attitude multiplied by knowledge, imagination and evaluation. As we have seen in the examples given above, having any one of the elements listed by Dr. Noller without the others will unlikely turn ideas into successful realization.
In layman’s terms, creativity is more than just coming up with new ideas. “Everyone who's ever taken a shower has an idea. It's the person who gets out of the shower, dries off and does something about it who makes the difference” proclaims Nolan Bushnell. Just try convincing the patent office that you deserve a patent for an idea that has yet to be realized.
But having just an idea, which is only perceived to be workable, may not be “good enough.” Indeed, being granted a patent does not provide instant wealth, as in the case of the pneumatic (air filled) tyre. Robert Thomson was granted the first patent for the pneumatic tyre in 1845. However, his design was too expensive and too impractical for commercial use to be a success. It wasn’t until more than 40 years later, that John Boyd Dunlop developed the idea further and in 1888 was granted a patent for his ‘Improvement in Tyres of Wheels for Bicycles, Tricycles, or other Road Cars’. Dunlop’s patent was later revoked on the grounds of Thomson’s earlier patent. Despite the ensuing competition, the Dunlop Rubber Company continued to be a success. ‘Workable’ and ‘usefulness’, it seems, are what ultimately brings financial success.
Kayee’s lack of action can be explained by Teresa Amabile’s (1996) componential theory of creativity. According to Amabile, creative production requires internal motivation, relevant skills and creative thinking skills. For us, that means: although she has the creative thinking skills, she lacked intrinsic motivation and relevant skills (in this case, her culinary or business skills) to bring the idea forward.
We don’t think there actually is a shortage in new ideas that can potentially enrich us financially (and/or emotionally). What our friend Ben means about “ideas are cheap without action” is that he and his team have so many ideas, that having good ideas glaring at you but not working them render them useless. Ben’s attitude is “where is the action?”. An idea without action is akin to an organization having a vision without the action. If we have three components of internal motivation, relevant skills and creative thinking skills, there is no reason not to act upon our ideas. As Henry Ford so elegantly summed it up when he said ‘You can’t build a reputation on what you’re going to do.’
So ownership of ideas can potentially make you rich – with the proviso that you make them work and turn them into something useful. The action plan and action are as important as the idea itself. Kudos to people who have the knowledge, skills, motivation and persistence to realize new and useful ideas.
Remember: “Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there” (Will Rogers).
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
The Drive to Excel
The Jakarta Post, 30 July 2006
What drives excellent performance? We are sure many organizations are in search for an answer to this question. Many of us are also in search for an answer to this question, in the quest to elevate our own performance, be it in our further studies, work or hobbies.
This article will explore and offer an answer to this question by way of two examples: one that resulted in a huge impact and changed the operation of a major industry in the world, and another of a person of ordinary background in an everyday life setting.
Have you watched “The Insider” (1999), a film produced by Michael Mann? This film is based on a real story that revealed tobacco companies’ role in what is dubbed in the film as “the delivery of nicotine”. Al Pacino played Lowell Bergman, an investigative reporter and ex-producer of CBS “60 Minutes”, who arranged an interview with a Dr. Jeffrey Wigand (played by Russel Crowe). Dr. Wigand was fired from his position as the Vice President of Research at Brown & Williamson, one of the Big Seven tobacco companies in the world, because the company was not willing to pull out their products that according to Dr. Wigand contained a substance that endangered customers’ health.
The film dramatized how CBS News, under the pressure of CBS Corporate, tried to pull the plug and abandoned the interview for the fear of being sued by the Big Seven, disregarding the fact that Dr. Wigand had undergone major personal, psychological, and financial stress to come forward. Bergman, being the producer who was personally involved with Dr. Wigand, did not relent to the pressure and instead put up a strategy – which you would have to find out for yourself in the film – at the risk of his own career. He succeeded in making CBS News release the full version of the interview, and resigned immediately after because he could no longer feel confident that he could give his words to his future interviewees, protect them, and deliver their words into action.
Both Bergman and Dr. Wigand took great personal risks, which they could have easily avoided if only they had not been compelled to take personal responsibilities for what they did. Now why would they do that? They both shared the same beliefs: that what they did was important and could make a difference. Bergman and Dr. Wigand had a clear purpose in what they were doing and also a sense of mission.
Having a clear purpose, sense of mission in life, and courage, are among the characteristics of what Dr. E. Paul Torrance – Distinguished Professor Emeritus of the University of Georgia and the so-called father of the field of Creative Studies – called the “beyonders”. Dr. Torrance started a longitudinal study in 1959 that tested high school students’ creative thinking abilities. Thirty years later, he followed up with the same group of people to find out whether creative thinking abilities predicted an individual’s performance. Dr. Torrance found that there were people who performed beyond expectations as predicted by the test. He called this group of individuals “beyonders” (Torrance & Safter, 1999).
You may think that the incentive of fame and the scale of impact in what one does may have contributed to the actions that Bergman and Dr. Wigand took; that they are the so-called “chosen” ones. But even if there were no incentive of fame and the impact of what we do is limited, does that mean we ordinary people don’t need to feel that what we do is important? That we don’t need to take our jobs and actions very seriously, and be driven by our own integrity as emulated by Bergman and Dr. Wigand?
We believe that, no matter how small an impact, every act of performance has great value. We also believe that, the same underlying attitude of ‘great’ people when applied to the everyday life of ‘ordinary’ people is what makes the difference between excellent and acceptable or mediocre performance. To illustrate this point, we will not turn to the story of Ibu Tini, who has been working as a housekeeper in a family for almost four years.
Every morning, Ibu Tini would wake up before dawn and start a series of household chores to ensure that three people are well fed and looked after. She would have finished her routine tasks, and other smaller tasks, before 10am every day.
The family realizes that Ibu Tini has a tremendous amount of work, and from time to time they would suggest hiring an extra pair of hands. Instead of saying yes, Ibu Tini would start talking about housekeepers who work in the neighboring houses, criticizing how inefficient and how irresponsible they are with their time, work, and employers’ money, especially when the owners of the house are not around.
Ibu Tini often complains about how expensive things are in Jakarta and shares her experiences in haggling with vegetable peddlars for the Rp.1000,- difference in prices with the wet market. What the family has realized over time is that Ibu Tini’s actions are driven by her own sense of integrity and taking her work seriously. Ibu Tini takes care of the family and the house, as if it was her own.
Mind you, she comes from a remote village in Trenggalek, East Java; has very little education and is barely literate. Compared to most of us who read The Jakarta Post, she obviously comes from a very humble background. Yet, she has an incredible sense of integrity, she knows that what she does is very important for the family, and she takes serious responsibility in what she does. By any terms, Ibu Tini exhibits excellent performance.
What Bergman, Dr. Wigand and Ibu Tini have in common are: a sense of purpose in what they do, which we believe drive their attitude in their work. The attitude of taking and doing one’s work seriously and with a sense of integrity.
The importance of attitude cannot be over emphasized, especially in the context of working in Indonesia. We are often frustrated by the lack of discipline and motivation in the work context, which seem to stem from these thoughts: someone else will take care of the responsibility if I don’t; no need to rush, I can do it later; this is not my money, facilities, nor vision/ mission in life, so why should I care? But the truth of the matter is, we must care about what we do. As Dr. Covey so succinctly put it in his book “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”: how do you want to have lived your life when you are on your deathbed? If we don’t care about what we do, maybe it’s time to find something we do care about.
After being fired from Brown & Williamson, Dr. Wigand applied for the position of Japanese and Science teacher at duPont Manual High School, from which he was awarded the Sallie Mae First Class Teacher in 1996. He now continues his efforts to reduce the use of tobacco among teenagers through a non-profit organization he founded, Smoke-Free Kids. In 2000 he won World Health Organization Award for Tobacco Control, and in 2002 he won Hero of the Year Award from American Heart Association.
Lowell Bergman is currently teaching at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley. He is an investigative reporter for The New York Times, and a producer and correspondent for the PBS documentary series “Frontline”. He investigated and reported on the Enron Corporation before it collapsed, the roots of terrorism crisis, and 30-year history of the war on drugs among many others. In 2004, he won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service.
While Ibu Tini has not won any award (since there is no such thing as Best Housekeeper Award), she continues to do the same daily routine and she remains very much appreciated in the family. Although many great performers of everyday life may never be recognized for their contribution to society, it has never stopped them from performing excellently, for the simple reason that they care about what they do.
In the search of personal excellence, we ought to ask ourselves these questions: “What do we care about?” and “With what attitude will we approach our work?”
What drives excellent performance? We are sure many organizations are in search for an answer to this question. Many of us are also in search for an answer to this question, in the quest to elevate our own performance, be it in our further studies, work or hobbies.
This article will explore and offer an answer to this question by way of two examples: one that resulted in a huge impact and changed the operation of a major industry in the world, and another of a person of ordinary background in an everyday life setting.
Have you watched “The Insider” (1999), a film produced by Michael Mann? This film is based on a real story that revealed tobacco companies’ role in what is dubbed in the film as “the delivery of nicotine”. Al Pacino played Lowell Bergman, an investigative reporter and ex-producer of CBS “60 Minutes”, who arranged an interview with a Dr. Jeffrey Wigand (played by Russel Crowe). Dr. Wigand was fired from his position as the Vice President of Research at Brown & Williamson, one of the Big Seven tobacco companies in the world, because the company was not willing to pull out their products that according to Dr. Wigand contained a substance that endangered customers’ health.
The film dramatized how CBS News, under the pressure of CBS Corporate, tried to pull the plug and abandoned the interview for the fear of being sued by the Big Seven, disregarding the fact that Dr. Wigand had undergone major personal, psychological, and financial stress to come forward. Bergman, being the producer who was personally involved with Dr. Wigand, did not relent to the pressure and instead put up a strategy – which you would have to find out for yourself in the film – at the risk of his own career. He succeeded in making CBS News release the full version of the interview, and resigned immediately after because he could no longer feel confident that he could give his words to his future interviewees, protect them, and deliver their words into action.
Both Bergman and Dr. Wigand took great personal risks, which they could have easily avoided if only they had not been compelled to take personal responsibilities for what they did. Now why would they do that? They both shared the same beliefs: that what they did was important and could make a difference. Bergman and Dr. Wigand had a clear purpose in what they were doing and also a sense of mission.
Having a clear purpose, sense of mission in life, and courage, are among the characteristics of what Dr. E. Paul Torrance – Distinguished Professor Emeritus of the University of Georgia and the so-called father of the field of Creative Studies – called the “beyonders”. Dr. Torrance started a longitudinal study in 1959 that tested high school students’ creative thinking abilities. Thirty years later, he followed up with the same group of people to find out whether creative thinking abilities predicted an individual’s performance. Dr. Torrance found that there were people who performed beyond expectations as predicted by the test. He called this group of individuals “beyonders” (Torrance & Safter, 1999).
You may think that the incentive of fame and the scale of impact in what one does may have contributed to the actions that Bergman and Dr. Wigand took; that they are the so-called “chosen” ones. But even if there were no incentive of fame and the impact of what we do is limited, does that mean we ordinary people don’t need to feel that what we do is important? That we don’t need to take our jobs and actions very seriously, and be driven by our own integrity as emulated by Bergman and Dr. Wigand?
We believe that, no matter how small an impact, every act of performance has great value. We also believe that, the same underlying attitude of ‘great’ people when applied to the everyday life of ‘ordinary’ people is what makes the difference between excellent and acceptable or mediocre performance. To illustrate this point, we will not turn to the story of Ibu Tini, who has been working as a housekeeper in a family for almost four years.
Every morning, Ibu Tini would wake up before dawn and start a series of household chores to ensure that three people are well fed and looked after. She would have finished her routine tasks, and other smaller tasks, before 10am every day.
The family realizes that Ibu Tini has a tremendous amount of work, and from time to time they would suggest hiring an extra pair of hands. Instead of saying yes, Ibu Tini would start talking about housekeepers who work in the neighboring houses, criticizing how inefficient and how irresponsible they are with their time, work, and employers’ money, especially when the owners of the house are not around.
Ibu Tini often complains about how expensive things are in Jakarta and shares her experiences in haggling with vegetable peddlars for the Rp.1000,- difference in prices with the wet market. What the family has realized over time is that Ibu Tini’s actions are driven by her own sense of integrity and taking her work seriously. Ibu Tini takes care of the family and the house, as if it was her own.
Mind you, she comes from a remote village in Trenggalek, East Java; has very little education and is barely literate. Compared to most of us who read The Jakarta Post, she obviously comes from a very humble background. Yet, she has an incredible sense of integrity, she knows that what she does is very important for the family, and she takes serious responsibility in what she does. By any terms, Ibu Tini exhibits excellent performance.
What Bergman, Dr. Wigand and Ibu Tini have in common are: a sense of purpose in what they do, which we believe drive their attitude in their work. The attitude of taking and doing one’s work seriously and with a sense of integrity.
The importance of attitude cannot be over emphasized, especially in the context of working in Indonesia. We are often frustrated by the lack of discipline and motivation in the work context, which seem to stem from these thoughts: someone else will take care of the responsibility if I don’t; no need to rush, I can do it later; this is not my money, facilities, nor vision/ mission in life, so why should I care? But the truth of the matter is, we must care about what we do. As Dr. Covey so succinctly put it in his book “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”: how do you want to have lived your life when you are on your deathbed? If we don’t care about what we do, maybe it’s time to find something we do care about.
After being fired from Brown & Williamson, Dr. Wigand applied for the position of Japanese and Science teacher at duPont Manual High School, from which he was awarded the Sallie Mae First Class Teacher in 1996. He now continues his efforts to reduce the use of tobacco among teenagers through a non-profit organization he founded, Smoke-Free Kids. In 2000 he won World Health Organization Award for Tobacco Control, and in 2002 he won Hero of the Year Award from American Heart Association.
Lowell Bergman is currently teaching at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley. He is an investigative reporter for The New York Times, and a producer and correspondent for the PBS documentary series “Frontline”. He investigated and reported on the Enron Corporation before it collapsed, the roots of terrorism crisis, and 30-year history of the war on drugs among many others. In 2004, he won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service.
While Ibu Tini has not won any award (since there is no such thing as Best Housekeeper Award), she continues to do the same daily routine and she remains very much appreciated in the family. Although many great performers of everyday life may never be recognized for their contribution to society, it has never stopped them from performing excellently, for the simple reason that they care about what they do.
In the search of personal excellence, we ought to ask ourselves these questions: “What do we care about?” and “With what attitude will we approach our work?”
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
Ethics and Creativity Promote "Good Work"
Feature, The Jakarta Post, January 28, 2007
Recently, when opening her e-mail account, Dewi's attention was caught by news titled "The Memory Pill" with this short description: "If you have experienced a painful or traumatic event, would you want a pill which could lessen the bad memories of what happened? That option might soon be here because of a drug called propanolol." Intrigued, she clicked the hyperlink, which brought her to a short 60 Minutes segment on the subject.
The coverage discussed propanolol, a drug that blocks adrenaline and makes us forget intense fear and stressful situations that have happened in the past. 60 Minutes also covered opposing views on the subject. Those in favor of the drug said how helpful it would be for people with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) to overcome their suffering, while those against worried the drug could be used to manipulate people to achieve a fake "happiness".
The issue of ethics and morality in medicine and biomedical engineering has been an ongoing debate in recent years. Should we leave the decisions for individuals to make or should we leave it up to institutions or the government to decide?
There is no easy answer to this question. With an increasingly complex society and the inventions of even more controversial human products and relationships, morality and ethics are increasingly relevant.
The aim of this article is not to discuss specifically the moral and ethical issues surrounding new products; it is more to do with their relationship with creativity.
Should there be limits to creativity? Granted, there are gray areas such as the memory pill case, but we think there are also absolute moral limits to what we usually would refer to as creativity. Most people would not call an act of human destruction, however intricately conceived, such as the 911 terrorist attack, an act of human creativity. As such, we define creativity as an act motivated by the human desire to contribute positively to society.
A research project named "The Good Work Project" launched by prominent psychologists comes to mind. In 1995, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, a professor at the Drucker School of Management at Claremont Graduate University, William Damon professor of education at Stanford University, and Howard Gardner, a professor of education at the Harvard Graduate School of education, investigated the aspects contributing to "good work" in the fields of journalism and medicine.
They have since extended the application of "good work", defined as "work that is excellent in quality, socially responsible, and meaningful to its practitioners" in fields such as arts, business, education, law, medicine, philanthropy, and sports. They also separated "good work" from "compromised work", defined as "work which is legal, but undermines the core values of the profession", and from "poor, substandard work".
The researchers identified four elements that condition "good work": personal standards -- values, religious faith, self-image; social controls -- reciprocity, trust, community needs, ethics boards; cultural controls -- requirements of job, traditions, professional codes, and outcome controls -- extrinsic benefits, power, prestige. Because of these factors, it is far easier for individuals to perform "good work" in an accountable, open, and democratic society, rather than in a corrupt, untrustworthy, and autocratic society (The Good Work Project, 2006).
In the case of Indonesia, although conducting "good work" is urgent, it is very difficult to pursue because the standards for social and cultural controls are, frankly, rather poor. One of the seemingly innocuous, but potentially damaging aspect of Indonesian culture for the promotion of "good work" in the work context is inarguably the concept of sungkan.
Sungkan is a word that describes a socially acceptable manner in which one can not refuse or say no to another person, for the fear of offending the other person; or a manner in which one can not accept something or say yes to another person's offer because it would be considered as impolite.
Sungkan is when someone says or does things out of obligation, and seemingly agrees to do something being asked by another person, but without actually meaning to do it. Sungkan is when someone tries to do something for other people so he or she is perceived as a nice and helpful person.
Consider this hypothetical example in a work setting. Say you asked one of your coworkers to work on a task. Out of sungkan, he said yes (although he knew ahead of time that he couldn't possibly fit it in his work schedule), and you went away, assuming the task had been taken care of.
Several days passed, and when you asked the person about the progress of the task, he started explaining apologetically that his busy schedule had made it impossible for him to work on it, but he promised it would be done within the next couple of days.
Thinking you still had time before the deadline, you decided to give him the time he needed. But when you asked him again, he apparently still could not find the time. So in the end, you frantically tried to get the job done yourself within the impossible deadline. Some of your other coworkers ended up dropping their jobs to help you meet the deadline, leaving their own deadlines unattended. Many people ended up being in a stressful working condition simply because one person was sungkan.
The reason why sungkan could hinder "good work" is because the quality of work that comes out of sungkan is most likely "compromised". Sungkan is not being honest and truthful to oneself as well as to others. It may not be as equally damaging as being dishonest or even deceitful to others, but sungkan often result in wasting a lot of time and energy because someone could not say no to a request.
Consider another similar hypothetical example. You asked one of your more senior coworkers the possibility of pursuing a new line of task you wanted to propose to your boss. She was very willing to promote the idea and actually fit it in her busy schedule. She asked other people including yourself to help her out to meet the deadline for the next board meeting. So you all worked along, put in extra time as the deadline loomed, getting excited for the time when the proposal is completed.
But when you actually went to meet with your boss at the board meeting, your idea was rejected by your boss because it did not meet some criteria you didn't even know existed in the company. And you realized there and then, in front of your boss, that your senior coworker had found out about the impossibility of the plan, but out of sungkan, she did not tell you about it. And you sat there, feeling completely betrayed by the person you knew had no bad intention towards you, but who chose to avoid being honest with you about your idea. So many man hours and energy was wasted because, again, one person was sungkan.
The last example also highlights another ethical issue of information sharing. Naturally, the more senior staff in a company would know more about how things work within the company. However, whether they share this information with newer or junior staff is often left at their discretion. Information sharing, although often would help make work more productive and effective, is unfortunately often equal to the position of power within a company. How much information is shared is a matter of delicate balance of morality and ethics.
In The World is Flat (2005), Thomas Friedman posited that one of the reasons the poor and developing countries had been dominated by other countries of political leaders was because of inadequate information that could be accessed by many of their citizens. This unequal access to information enabled the developed countries, and authoritarian and corrupt governments, to maintain power and be ahead of the game. But with increasing access to the Internet, the distribution of information has been equalized.
While ethics and morality will remain delicate issues, what we hope to have achieved through this article is the promotion of "good work" in our everyday practices. While social and cultural controls in Indonesia are rather poor, we would like to pose that precisely because of this, we should try to maintain and even increase our personal standards while at the same time making an effort to model good social and cultural behavior because individuals eventually make up the social and cultural controls within a society.
Have a happy and ethically creative year!
Recently, when opening her e-mail account, Dewi's attention was caught by news titled "The Memory Pill" with this short description: "If you have experienced a painful or traumatic event, would you want a pill which could lessen the bad memories of what happened? That option might soon be here because of a drug called propanolol." Intrigued, she clicked the hyperlink, which brought her to a short 60 Minutes segment on the subject.
The coverage discussed propanolol, a drug that blocks adrenaline and makes us forget intense fear and stressful situations that have happened in the past. 60 Minutes also covered opposing views on the subject. Those in favor of the drug said how helpful it would be for people with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) to overcome their suffering, while those against worried the drug could be used to manipulate people to achieve a fake "happiness".
The issue of ethics and morality in medicine and biomedical engineering has been an ongoing debate in recent years. Should we leave the decisions for individuals to make or should we leave it up to institutions or the government to decide?
There is no easy answer to this question. With an increasingly complex society and the inventions of even more controversial human products and relationships, morality and ethics are increasingly relevant.
The aim of this article is not to discuss specifically the moral and ethical issues surrounding new products; it is more to do with their relationship with creativity.
Should there be limits to creativity? Granted, there are gray areas such as the memory pill case, but we think there are also absolute moral limits to what we usually would refer to as creativity. Most people would not call an act of human destruction, however intricately conceived, such as the 911 terrorist attack, an act of human creativity. As such, we define creativity as an act motivated by the human desire to contribute positively to society.
A research project named "The Good Work Project" launched by prominent psychologists comes to mind. In 1995, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, a professor at the Drucker School of Management at Claremont Graduate University, William Damon professor of education at Stanford University, and Howard Gardner, a professor of education at the Harvard Graduate School of education, investigated the aspects contributing to "good work" in the fields of journalism and medicine.
They have since extended the application of "good work", defined as "work that is excellent in quality, socially responsible, and meaningful to its practitioners" in fields such as arts, business, education, law, medicine, philanthropy, and sports. They also separated "good work" from "compromised work", defined as "work which is legal, but undermines the core values of the profession", and from "poor, substandard work".
The researchers identified four elements that condition "good work": personal standards -- values, religious faith, self-image; social controls -- reciprocity, trust, community needs, ethics boards; cultural controls -- requirements of job, traditions, professional codes, and outcome controls -- extrinsic benefits, power, prestige. Because of these factors, it is far easier for individuals to perform "good work" in an accountable, open, and democratic society, rather than in a corrupt, untrustworthy, and autocratic society (The Good Work Project, 2006).
In the case of Indonesia, although conducting "good work" is urgent, it is very difficult to pursue because the standards for social and cultural controls are, frankly, rather poor. One of the seemingly innocuous, but potentially damaging aspect of Indonesian culture for the promotion of "good work" in the work context is inarguably the concept of sungkan.
Sungkan is a word that describes a socially acceptable manner in which one can not refuse or say no to another person, for the fear of offending the other person; or a manner in which one can not accept something or say yes to another person's offer because it would be considered as impolite.
Sungkan is when someone says or does things out of obligation, and seemingly agrees to do something being asked by another person, but without actually meaning to do it. Sungkan is when someone tries to do something for other people so he or she is perceived as a nice and helpful person.
Consider this hypothetical example in a work setting. Say you asked one of your coworkers to work on a task. Out of sungkan, he said yes (although he knew ahead of time that he couldn't possibly fit it in his work schedule), and you went away, assuming the task had been taken care of.
Several days passed, and when you asked the person about the progress of the task, he started explaining apologetically that his busy schedule had made it impossible for him to work on it, but he promised it would be done within the next couple of days.
Thinking you still had time before the deadline, you decided to give him the time he needed. But when you asked him again, he apparently still could not find the time. So in the end, you frantically tried to get the job done yourself within the impossible deadline. Some of your other coworkers ended up dropping their jobs to help you meet the deadline, leaving their own deadlines unattended. Many people ended up being in a stressful working condition simply because one person was sungkan.
The reason why sungkan could hinder "good work" is because the quality of work that comes out of sungkan is most likely "compromised". Sungkan is not being honest and truthful to oneself as well as to others. It may not be as equally damaging as being dishonest or even deceitful to others, but sungkan often result in wasting a lot of time and energy because someone could not say no to a request.
Consider another similar hypothetical example. You asked one of your more senior coworkers the possibility of pursuing a new line of task you wanted to propose to your boss. She was very willing to promote the idea and actually fit it in her busy schedule. She asked other people including yourself to help her out to meet the deadline for the next board meeting. So you all worked along, put in extra time as the deadline loomed, getting excited for the time when the proposal is completed.
But when you actually went to meet with your boss at the board meeting, your idea was rejected by your boss because it did not meet some criteria you didn't even know existed in the company. And you realized there and then, in front of your boss, that your senior coworker had found out about the impossibility of the plan, but out of sungkan, she did not tell you about it. And you sat there, feeling completely betrayed by the person you knew had no bad intention towards you, but who chose to avoid being honest with you about your idea. So many man hours and energy was wasted because, again, one person was sungkan.
The last example also highlights another ethical issue of information sharing. Naturally, the more senior staff in a company would know more about how things work within the company. However, whether they share this information with newer or junior staff is often left at their discretion. Information sharing, although often would help make work more productive and effective, is unfortunately often equal to the position of power within a company. How much information is shared is a matter of delicate balance of morality and ethics.
In The World is Flat (2005), Thomas Friedman posited that one of the reasons the poor and developing countries had been dominated by other countries of political leaders was because of inadequate information that could be accessed by many of their citizens. This unequal access to information enabled the developed countries, and authoritarian and corrupt governments, to maintain power and be ahead of the game. But with increasing access to the Internet, the distribution of information has been equalized.
While ethics and morality will remain delicate issues, what we hope to have achieved through this article is the promotion of "good work" in our everyday practices. While social and cultural controls in Indonesia are rather poor, we would like to pose that precisely because of this, we should try to maintain and even increase our personal standards while at the same time making an effort to model good social and cultural behavior because individuals eventually make up the social and cultural controls within a society.
Have a happy and ethically creative year!
Monday, January 15, 2007
Reaching True Consensus at Work
How often do you find yourself in a situation where you need to reach a solution to a problem with your co-workers? How does your group go about it? Does your boss decide what to do? Does your group decide to vote and let the majority decide the outcome? Or do you try to reach a true consensus?
If you have been part of different groups, think about how you felt when your boss simply made all the decisions and distributed the tasks authoritatively. Compare it to the times when the group voted on what to do, who should do it, etc. And lastly, reflect on the time when you were engaged in a discussion where everyone contributed their opinions in order to reach a group decision.
When you finally reached a conclusion in each case, and dispersed to implement the goal, how engaged were you with the task at hand?
Here's an article that will discuss the pros and cons of each option, and how to go about doing the best option: Getting a true consensus.
Kayee once joined a workshop on teamwork, in which one particular activity stood out in relation to group decision making. The participants were split into three groups, each was asked to find answers to a list of questions. Each group had an appointed leader and were instructed to arrive at answers in different ways.
The first group was to have the leader decide on the answer if there was disagreement in views. The second group was asked to vote for the majority decision if there was not a unifying view. The last group was asked to discuss disparate views and get individual views across in order for a true consensus to be arrived at.
Then came the crux of the exercise. Which group came up with the most correct answers? It was the third group -- although they took the longest amount of time to reach a solution to their problem. The first group with the autocratic leader, although the most time efficient, had the least amount of correct answers. The second group that made decision by majority vote was in the middle in time efficiency and arriving at correct solutions when compared to the other groups.
This exercise simulates three group decision making processes and the most likely outcomes of each process. At times when we feel pushed to come up with solutions and decisions quickly, we often don't give ourselves enough time to explore solutions thoroughly. As a result we encounter problems later in the process.
Ever tried implementing a plan only to find out things that didn't occur to you or your team during planning? This is often the consequence of "pushing" for a solution in as short a time as possible. This is like the autocratic leadership situation above or at best, the majority vote situation.
Although true consensus has a trade off in taking a longer time to arrive at a solution, true consensus has the benefit of taking into account a diversity of perspectives and hence exploring alternative solutions more thoroughly, thereby reducing the chances of avoidable pitfalls.
You may have noticed that we're not talking simply about "consensus" but "true consensus". Why the pickiness in the use of words?
Here's why: a group that claims to have consensus where people agree for the sake of moving on but who don't really believe in the outcome of the group's decision is different from the type of consensus where the group truly agrees and believes in the decision. In fact, many people hide behind the curtain of false consensus.
Developing new ideas into a workable plan for implementation more often than not requires team effort. The beauty of teamwork is the diversity of views brought to the table.
Most companies have different divisions and some seem to have opposing views and goals. Marketing and production are the classic example of having dissenting views and goals. But when we bear in mind that everyone actually belongs to the same company, then for the good of everyone, we should actually be working toward the same goal.
Our differences come from the angles with which we approach a problem. The marketing division pours energy into thinking about ways to make products marketable. The production division focuses efforts in maintaining the quality of products. The administration division works toward streamlining working processes. If all these divisions are well aligned, and can agree on a common goal to achieve, then chances are everyone will be working effectively, productively and synergistically.
It is common practice nowadays to bring together people from diverse fields of expertise to find solutions to a complex problem. The aim is often to reach a true consensus, as true consensus results in better decisions and hence better use of new ideas. How to arrive at true consensus is the next question we will investigate.
True consensus is arrived at by individual group members airing their dissenting views and group members working their way through differences. Jeffrey Sachs, a prominent economist who acted as special adviser to former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan, calls this process "analytical deliberation".
Sachs described how analytical deliberation was used when he was tasked by the World Health Organization to chair the WHO Commission on Macroeconomics and Health (CMH). The CMH was asked to propose practical solutions based on economic costs and benefits to alleviate the health crises in Africa.
The CMH consisted of 18 commissioners including Nobel laureates, leaders of worldwide organizations and government ministries from the fields of health, economics, trade and finance.
Given such diversity in a group, Sachs wrote: "If you put people of strongly opposing views in a room together and infuse their discussion with data, background studies, and unhurried time for debate, it is possible to bridge seemingly irreconcilable positions among the members of the group."
As a result, the group formed a consensus on the relationship between poverty and disease, the reasons for the short life expectancies in poor countries and how much the rich world should help the poor world to invest in health. Challenging topics to discuss and debate but as highlighted by Sachs, it is possible to reach consensus.
Sachs wrote that the resulting report "found a wide audience, in part, because it was based on a broad and surprising consensus". A consensus arrived after much deliberation has the benefit of being well argued as many dissenting views have been taken into account.
Furthermore, from our experience in our work, a deliberated consensus has the benefit of team members' commitment to an idea or plan of action, because everyone involved feels they are engaged in the decision making and contributing to the outcome of the goal.
It is also useful to note the difference between debate and conflict. Where debate focuses people's attention on ideas and the differences in opinions regarding ideas and is a constructive process, conflict is focused on people and negative emotions for others and is a destructive process.
Making group members aware of this difference at the beginning of a meeting and instructing group members to debate and not get mired in conflict will set the expectations for accepted behavior and standards for working together on the outset. Group members also need to be aware of their own "inducibility" (Johnson & Johnson, 2006) -- their willingness to change their views based on convincing argumentation.
Whether you are a team member or team leader, you have a part to play in (truly) uniting the diversity in views to yield better decisions. Do you work by conflict or by debate? Are you "inducible"? Are you taking advantage of a diversity of views in your team to get better decisions? How can your group reach true consensus?
If you have been part of different groups, think about how you felt when your boss simply made all the decisions and distributed the tasks authoritatively. Compare it to the times when the group voted on what to do, who should do it, etc. And lastly, reflect on the time when you were engaged in a discussion where everyone contributed their opinions in order to reach a group decision.
When you finally reached a conclusion in each case, and dispersed to implement the goal, how engaged were you with the task at hand?
Here's an article that will discuss the pros and cons of each option, and how to go about doing the best option: Getting a true consensus.
Kayee once joined a workshop on teamwork, in which one particular activity stood out in relation to group decision making. The participants were split into three groups, each was asked to find answers to a list of questions. Each group had an appointed leader and were instructed to arrive at answers in different ways.
The first group was to have the leader decide on the answer if there was disagreement in views. The second group was asked to vote for the majority decision if there was not a unifying view. The last group was asked to discuss disparate views and get individual views across in order for a true consensus to be arrived at.
Then came the crux of the exercise. Which group came up with the most correct answers? It was the third group -- although they took the longest amount of time to reach a solution to their problem. The first group with the autocratic leader, although the most time efficient, had the least amount of correct answers. The second group that made decision by majority vote was in the middle in time efficiency and arriving at correct solutions when compared to the other groups.
This exercise simulates three group decision making processes and the most likely outcomes of each process. At times when we feel pushed to come up with solutions and decisions quickly, we often don't give ourselves enough time to explore solutions thoroughly. As a result we encounter problems later in the process.
Ever tried implementing a plan only to find out things that didn't occur to you or your team during planning? This is often the consequence of "pushing" for a solution in as short a time as possible. This is like the autocratic leadership situation above or at best, the majority vote situation.
Although true consensus has a trade off in taking a longer time to arrive at a solution, true consensus has the benefit of taking into account a diversity of perspectives and hence exploring alternative solutions more thoroughly, thereby reducing the chances of avoidable pitfalls.
You may have noticed that we're not talking simply about "consensus" but "true consensus". Why the pickiness in the use of words?
Here's why: a group that claims to have consensus where people agree for the sake of moving on but who don't really believe in the outcome of the group's decision is different from the type of consensus where the group truly agrees and believes in the decision. In fact, many people hide behind the curtain of false consensus.
Developing new ideas into a workable plan for implementation more often than not requires team effort. The beauty of teamwork is the diversity of views brought to the table.
Most companies have different divisions and some seem to have opposing views and goals. Marketing and production are the classic example of having dissenting views and goals. But when we bear in mind that everyone actually belongs to the same company, then for the good of everyone, we should actually be working toward the same goal.
Our differences come from the angles with which we approach a problem. The marketing division pours energy into thinking about ways to make products marketable. The production division focuses efforts in maintaining the quality of products. The administration division works toward streamlining working processes. If all these divisions are well aligned, and can agree on a common goal to achieve, then chances are everyone will be working effectively, productively and synergistically.
It is common practice nowadays to bring together people from diverse fields of expertise to find solutions to a complex problem. The aim is often to reach a true consensus, as true consensus results in better decisions and hence better use of new ideas. How to arrive at true consensus is the next question we will investigate.
True consensus is arrived at by individual group members airing their dissenting views and group members working their way through differences. Jeffrey Sachs, a prominent economist who acted as special adviser to former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan, calls this process "analytical deliberation".
Sachs described how analytical deliberation was used when he was tasked by the World Health Organization to chair the WHO Commission on Macroeconomics and Health (CMH). The CMH was asked to propose practical solutions based on economic costs and benefits to alleviate the health crises in Africa.
The CMH consisted of 18 commissioners including Nobel laureates, leaders of worldwide organizations and government ministries from the fields of health, economics, trade and finance.
Given such diversity in a group, Sachs wrote: "If you put people of strongly opposing views in a room together and infuse their discussion with data, background studies, and unhurried time for debate, it is possible to bridge seemingly irreconcilable positions among the members of the group."
As a result, the group formed a consensus on the relationship between poverty and disease, the reasons for the short life expectancies in poor countries and how much the rich world should help the poor world to invest in health. Challenging topics to discuss and debate but as highlighted by Sachs, it is possible to reach consensus.
Sachs wrote that the resulting report "found a wide audience, in part, because it was based on a broad and surprising consensus". A consensus arrived after much deliberation has the benefit of being well argued as many dissenting views have been taken into account.
Furthermore, from our experience in our work, a deliberated consensus has the benefit of team members' commitment to an idea or plan of action, because everyone involved feels they are engaged in the decision making and contributing to the outcome of the goal.
It is also useful to note the difference between debate and conflict. Where debate focuses people's attention on ideas and the differences in opinions regarding ideas and is a constructive process, conflict is focused on people and negative emotions for others and is a destructive process.
Making group members aware of this difference at the beginning of a meeting and instructing group members to debate and not get mired in conflict will set the expectations for accepted behavior and standards for working together on the outset. Group members also need to be aware of their own "inducibility" (Johnson & Johnson, 2006) -- their willingness to change their views based on convincing argumentation.
Whether you are a team member or team leader, you have a part to play in (truly) uniting the diversity in views to yield better decisions. Do you work by conflict or by debate? Are you "inducible"? Are you taking advantage of a diversity of views in your team to get better decisions? How can your group reach true consensus?
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