Jeremiah Stanghini

Why We Lie, Cheat, and Steal: The Truth About Dishonesty

I’ve just finished the 5th week of my 4th year of graduate school. For folks that have been in graduate school this long, there’s usually a development of research interests. Because of the nature of my time in graduate school (1 year in a PhD program, 1 year completing my first Master’s, and now into year two of an MBA), I never really had to declare my research interests or choose a dissertation topic. Though, for my first master’s, I did have to write a final paper. That final paper was on a topic that, if I were asked, would probably appear on a list of my “research interests.” It was on intuition and decision-making. Ironically, I’m working with a professor at George Mason University to test whether or not one can improve the conditions for one’s intuition (in the context of decision-making).

If I were to list another research interest, I’d have to say that it’d be on the topic of ethics or morals. Ironically, during my time as an undergrad, I worked on a research project with a psychology professor where we were examining (among other things) people’s moral judgments. I’ve had an RSA Animate talk bookmarked for about two weeks and I just finished watching it — I think you’ll enjoy it.

It was given by Dan Ariely on the content of his new book: The Honest Truth About Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone—Especially Ourselves. Ariely is also the researcher I referenced a few months ago when I was talking about the research on American’s perceptions and misperceptions of wealth inequality. I’ve pulled a few important quotes from the video:

“The magnitude of dishonesty we see in society is by good people who think they’re doing good, but in fact cheating just a little bit, but because there’s so many of them — of us — it has a tremendous economic impact.”

“You can’t go and say to yourselves, chef really want their food to be eaten. And it’s really owned by a conglomerate that is really not that good. Some things lend themselves to a much higher degree of rationalization.”

“At some point, many people switch and start cheating all the time. And we call this switching point the ‘what the hell’ effect. It turns out we don’t have to be 100% good to think of ourselves as good. But if at some point you don’t think of yourself as good, you might as well enjoy. And many people, by the way, report this same thing with diets.”

“Your motivation influences how you see reality.”

The Most Important Thing: Ask Good Questions

I’ve read — a lot. And I continue to read — a lot. And I probably will keep reading — a lot. From this reading (and experience) I’ve learned quite a bit. I’ve read a variety of opinions on a variety of subjects. After all of this reading, patterns start to emerge. You start to see the same thing being written, but in a different context. Or, you start to see the same thing written, but with a different twist. There are lots of different ways that people have developed to help make us perform better, be better, or feel better about ourselves. One of the things that I’m surprised I don’t see written about more often is the powerful effect of asking good questions. To me, it as to be one of the most important things you can do.

Why? Well, because in some cases, it’s all you have.

There are different scenarios where we could discuss how asking good questions serves you well: job interviews, “ask the experts,” crisis response, etc. Instead of going down that road, I want to talk about why I think asking good questions (generally) is an important thing.

There’s the idea that if you ask a good question, you may impress (unintentionally) the person you’re talking to and as a result, you may seem smarter to them than you actually are or you may be memorable. While that’s all well and good and may be a motivating factor for some to ask good questions, I’m more interested in asking good questions because I think it’s one of the unique ways that we can contribute (to the world).

As I mentioned above, I’ve done a lot of reading. As a result of that reading, I have a unique perspective on whatever conversation I’m in because it’s unlikely that there will be someone else like me in the conversation who has interacted with all the different things that I have interacted with. And so because of this, the ideas or thoughts that I may have about a given subject will likely be different from the rest of the people in the conversation. I may see connections that no one else sees or that no one else considers (but may be obvious to me because of what I know). In that sense, it’s almost like it’s my duty or obligation to come up with an intelligent question that incorporates that perspective.

I want to make it clear that I’m not advocating asking questions for the sake of asking questions. The question should still be meaningful and add value to the discussion. I’ll give you an example.

This summer, I had the chance to ask a question of the former COO of Obama for America (as he had just been hired to the organization I was working for this summer). Because of this person’s unique work experience, I thought he would be able to provide perspective on organizational structure. Specifically, whether or not a “Team of Teams” approach may work in the private sector. In my question, I also made reference to the (then) recent news at Barclay’s and JP Morgan Chase. In asking the question, my plan wasn’t to impress the person answering the question nor was it my intention to impress the crowd. In fact, the question was read as (anonymous). Ironically, after the question was read, there was a bit of a gasp from the crowd and the person answering the question sort of laughed about starting off with an “easy” one.

Solutions for Racism: How Race Affects Voting

A couple of days ago, I saw a tweet that linked to a TEDTalk from a few years ago. It was a TEDTalk from someone who I (and many others) hold in high regard: Nate Silver. Silver runs the FiveThirtyEight blog for the New York Times. He gained popularity in 2008 after he correctly predicted every US Senate race and just about all the electoral votes. He has a very sophisticated model that takes into account an assortment polls, along with economic data. He’s just come out with a book that I can’t wait to read. If you’re interested in statistics, prediction, or forecasting, I highly recommend it!

Anyways — today, I wanted to share the TEDTalk that I just watched. As the title of this post suggests, Silver is talking about how race affected voting in the 2008 election. Somewhat surprisingly, he also raises some possible solutions to these problems. I hope you’ll take 10 minutes and watch!

The “Cool” Way To Commute – By Bike

Towards the end of the summer, I moved. That move lowered my commute from 7.5 miles to about 2.5 miles. As a result, I thought I would consider biking (rather than driving). [Note: I know that 7.5 miles is actually still a short enough distance to commute by bike, but because of the bends/curves/hills, I wouldn’t have felt safe commuting by bike.] There is no shortage of hills on my commute by bike (as it is), but because I’m on hardly used roads, I feel much safer.

I’ve been commuting by bike for 5 weeks now and I rather enjoy it! I’ve only driven in a couple of instances (last-minute!) and taken the bus a couple of times, too. For the most part, I’m riding to and from. One of the best parts about commuting by bike — it forces you to exercise. There are some days when you “don’t feel like going to the gym,” (even though you had planned on it), but with a bicycle being your main method of commuting, you’re forced to exercise. There’s also the whole environmental aspect (pollution of the car, etc.).

In my experience commuting by bike, I can see some of the downsides: weather (it’s why I’ve taken the bus a couple of times), helmet hair, storage (I carry it on my back!), and maybe worst of all — wardrobe. While I’ve seen pictures of people who do, I don’t know how comfortable I would be cycling in a three-piece suit. And depending on the weather, there can be a bit more perspiration. But there are a number of pros, too: fresh air, no traffic, exercise, and saving on gas!

If you’re thinking about changing the way you commute, I hope you consider cycling.

Has the Automobile Peaked: The Economist Thinks So…

This morning I was thumbing through my copy of The Economist to find an intriguing headline: “Seeing the back of the car.” The “briefing” at the top of the page said, “The future of driving.”

After reading through the article, it’s seems to me that the author makes a convincing point (with data!) that the automobile has reached its peak.. It’s pretty hard to argue with some of the evidence, too. I’ve included one of the more enlightening graphs below. In it, you can see that the percentage of people getting their license (as compared across years) is definitely declining. While we can’t necessarily say that this means the end of the car. It would certainly be a contributing factor, though, if this were to occur. The Economist isn’t the only place where this argument’s being made either.

Much has been made of the generations transitioning into the work world and their lack of affinity for buying houses and cars. There are some reasonable explanations for this, too. If we think about the era that they’ve grown up, owning cars and houses weren’t the “be-all, end-all” like it was for previous generations. There’s a strong preference for spending money on other things.

One of my more popular posts here at Genuine Thriving was something I wrote near the beginning of my time writing here called, “Advancing Americas Public Transportation System: High-Speed Rail in the USA.” In my weekly glance at the posts that get the most hits, it’s often near the top. There are a number of possible explanations, but I think it has to do with a greater affinity for public transportation (than there used to be). As someone who has spent time in a number of different cities and countries with varying qualities of public transportation, it seems to me that a successful public transit is one of the cornerstones to a thriving local economy.

Note: If you’d like more evidence that public transit is vital to a city’s economy, check out Richard Florida’s work, who’s a Professor at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management.

Replacing the 40-hour Workweek with a 30- or 21-hour Workweek

This past summer, I posted a couple of articles from The Atlantic to Facebook. They both had to do with vacation — more specifically — the lack of vacation in the US when compared to other countries. As America’s health declines, I can’t help but think that there’s something to the idea of a shorter workweek and taking better care of ourselves.

This morning, I came across a TEDxTalk from one of the prominent members of the New Economics Foundation in London. In the video, she makes a rather compelling case for a shorter workweek. I don’t know that I agree with reducing the workweek to 21 hours, but I certainly think the conversation should be had as to the appropriate length of the workweek, especially in the context of declining health.

You Need To Seek Out Ideas and Opinions That Are Different From Your Beliefs

[Editor’s Note: This post’s title was changed on September 16th from “if you’re a conservative, tell me which liberals you read: if you’re a liberal, tell me which conservatives you read.”]

I was born and raised in Canada and really didn’t start paying attention to politics until I moved to the US, so most of my understanding of politics comes through the lens of American politics. Watching the Democrats and the Republicans fight (bicker?) year after year starts to get intolerable. As polls indicate, many American agree with this sentiment.

Part of this is a result of our natural inclination to seek out opinions that confirm our own previously held beliefs. That is, if one is more liberal, they are probably more inclined to watch MSNBC and/or read the New York Times. Similarly, if one is more conservative, they are probably more inclined to watch FOX News and/or read the Wall Street Journal. There’s no “good” or “bad” here, though I would caution people on watching FOX News.

So, if we know that we have a tendency to seek out opinions that confirm our previously held beliefs, it would behoove us to intentionally seek out opinions that we know are counter to our own! That sounds a lot easier than it actually is — especially in today’s world of RSS, Twitter, Facebook, and personalized news.

Not to pick on Facebook, but the friends you have on Facebook, more than likely, share your political affiliation. It’s just natural for us to befriend those people who think like us and even if you have a few friends from the “other side,” the news that they share on Facebook will most likely: a) get drowned out by all your other friends’ sharing news; or b) won’t be elevated to the top of your newsfeed because you tended not to click on the links provided by these friends.

While I don’t think there’s anything “wrong” with it, I do think that there’s something that we should be doing about it. If you’re a conservative, there are a critical mass of people out there who think that your opinion on issues of the day are wrong. If you’re a liberal, there are a critical mass of people out there who think that your opinion on issues of the day are wrong. What are you doing to try to understand why they think your opinion is wrong?

And yes, there are things that you can do.

Lifehacker proposed some ways to do this:

Get random reading content delivered to your inbox

“The easiest, no hassle way to get a random selection of news is to have it delivered right to your inbox.”

Automatically get different points of view for articles you read

“When you’re browsing the news it’s easy to stick with the sites you know. Sometimes that means you’re missing an entirely different point of view.”

Randomize your start page

“Your browser’s home page is a great place to dump interesting and random content for your accidental and automatic discovery. Obviously you don’t want to do this on your work computer in case you get distracted, but it’s a good way to discover new things when you have the time.”

~
Head on over to the Lifehacker article for more details and specific suggestions (for your start page). There’s one more suggestion I want to make (as it’s something that I do): Twitter. Instead of just following/reading news from people/accounts that I know are similar to my previously held beliefs, I have sought out those accounts that often discuss the issues from a perspective that is not native to me. This way, I’m able to read about the news from an entirely different perspective and from one that I may not have considered were it not for someone giving words to it.

So, I ask: if you’re a conservative, tell me who are the liberals that you read — if you’re a liberal, tell me who are the conservatives that you read.

More Lessons from “The Art of War”

A litte less than a week ago, I wrote a post detailing some of the lessons (or quotes) that I pulled from The Art of War. At that point, I had only read through a little more than half of the 13 chapters. Today, I’ve only got about 3 more chapters to go, but I thought I’d add a post with some of the other lessons I thought were worth repeating.

From pages 126, 127 and 128 of Samuel Griffiths translation (in 1963):

“When troops are strong and officers weak the army is insubordinate.”

“When the officers are valiant and the troops ineffective the army is in distress.”

“When the general is morally weak and his discipline not strict, when his instructions and guidance are not enlightened when there are no consistent rules to guide the officers and men when the formations are slovenly the army is in disorder.”

“When a commander is unable to estimate his enemy uses a small force to engage a large one, or weak troops to strike the strong, or when he fails to select shock troops for the van, the result is rout.”

“Conformation of the ground is of the greatest assistance in battle. Therefore, to estimate the enemy situation and to calculate distances and the degree of difficulty of the terrain so as to control victory are virtues of the superior general. He who fights with full knowledge of these factors is certain to win; he who does not will surely be defeated.”

You Waste a lot of Time at Work

… or at least so says this infographic from Atlassian. I wanted to embed the infographic here, but the infographic is not presented in a way that makes it easy to share (other than giving you the URL, which I’ve already done). So, I’ll just go over some of the key statistics from the inforgraphic. Though, I highly recommend checking out the infographic because the information presented in that fashion might make it more memorable.

They name three main culprits of wasting time at work: email, pointless meetings, and constant interruptions. I think these are probably all things that most people would agree on. Let’s look at some of the costs associated with these “culprits.”

Email

Annual Productivity Costs per Employee:

Spam: $1250

Unnecessary emails: $1800

Poorly written communications: $2100 to $4100

Meetings

U.S. Business lose $37 billion in salary because of the cost of unnecessary meetings

Interruptions

Interruptions a day for the average employee: 56

Minutes spent working before the average employee switches tasks: 3

Hours spent recovering from distractions per day: 2

If all of this is true, it kind of makes it hard to ignore the costs associated with these three major time-wasters. Of course, Atlassian’s motive isn’t entirely pure. At the bottom of the infographic, they’d like you to sign-up to learn how their business solution (Confluence)* can help your team work more efficiently.

The information provided in the infographic is certainly compelling, isn’t it? The point about email seems particularly poignant, especially the note about poorly written communication. It seems that a team leader would want to host a workshop or hire some help to ensure that the team is communicating at its optimal capacity.

Seeing this infographic also makes me want to revisit Tim Ferriss’ 4-Hour Work Week. There are lots of important productivity tools in there for making your team more efficient. More than that, be sure to check out Ferriss’ blog, where he continues to talk about ways to improve efficiency (in many different aspects of life: he’s just finishing up a book on cooking and he’s also published a book on dieting/working out).

*Note: Please don’t consider this an endorsement of Atlassian or Confluence. I hadn’t heard of the company (or the product) until I came across this infographic and I have no experience using Confluence.

“Who didn’t make it out? The optimists” — Lessons from the Stockdale Paradox

I mentioned yesterday that I had borrowed a number of books to read for what I thought was going to be a road trip from DC to Newfoundland. Things didn’t turn out the way that I thought they would, but I still had these books that I was interested to read. One of those books: Good to Great.

Good to Great was written by Jim Collins, with the help of his research team, a little over a decade ago. After reading through it, it’s amazing how many of his findings still seem to apply in today’s business world. In fact, now that I’ve finished reading Good to Great, I’m excited to read a book he published this past year: Great by Choice. One of the stories that I read in the book I found quite profound. I’ve found some audio of Jim Collins talking about this story, but I also want to give you the opportunity to read the passage and discover it in the same way that I have. So, I’ve included the relevant text (from page 83-85):

The Stockdale Paradox
The name refers to Admiral Jim Stockdale, who was the highest ranking United States military officer in the Hanoi Hilton prisoner-of-war camp during the height of the Vietnam War. Tortured over 20 times during his eight-year imprisonment from 1965 to 1973, Stockdale lived out the war without any prisoners rights, no set release date, and no certainty as to whether he would even survive to see his family again. He shouldered the burden of command, doing everything he could to create conditions that would increase the number of prisoners who would survive unbroken, while fighting an internal war against his captors and their attempts to use the prisoners for propaganda. At one point, he beat himself with a stool and cut himself with a razor, deliberately disfiguring himself, so that he could not be put on videotape as an example of a well-treated prisoner. He exchanged secret intelligence information with his wife through their letters, knowing that discovery would mean more torture and perhaps death. He instituted rules that would help people to deal with torture (no one can resist torture indefinitely, so he created a step-wise systemafter x minutes, you can say certain thingsthat gave the men milestones to survive toward). He instituted an elaborate internal communications system to reduce the sense of isolation that their captors tried to create, which used a five-by-five matrix of tap codes for alpha characters. (Tap-tap equals the letter a, tap-pause-tap-tap equals the letter b, tap-tap-pause-tap equals the letter f, and so forth, for 25 letters, c doubling for k.) At one point, during an imposed silence, the prisoners mopped and swept the central yard using the code, swish-swashing out We love you to Stockdale, on the third anniversary of his being shot down. After his release, Stockdale became the first three-star officer in the history of the navy to wear both aviator wings and the Congressional Medal of Honor.
You can understand, then, my anticipation at the prospect of spending part of an afternoon with Stockdale. One of my students had written his paper on Stockdale, who happened to be a senior research fellow studying the Stoic philosophers at the Hoover Institution right across the street from my office, and Stockdale invited the two of us for lunch. In preparation, I read In Love and War, the book Stockdale and his wife had written in alternating chapters, chronicling their experiences during those eight years.
As I moved through the book, I found myself getting depressed. It just seemed so bleakthe uncertainty of his fate, the brutality of his captors, and so forth. And then, it dawned on me: Here I am sitting in my warm and comfortable office, looking out over the beautiful Stanford campus on a beautiful Saturday afternoon. Im getting depressed reading this, and I know the end of the story! I know that he gets out, reunites with his family, becomes a national hero, and gets to spend the later years of his life studying philosophy on this same beautiful campus. If it feels depressing for me, how on earth did he deal with it when he was actually there and did not know the end of the story?
I never lost faith in the end of the story, he said, when I asked him. I never doubted not only that I would get out, but also that I would prevail in the end and turn the experience into the defining event of my life, which, in retrospect, I would not trade.

* * *

I didnt say anything for many minutes, and we continued the slow walk toward the faculty club, Stockdale limping and arc-swinging his stiff leg that had never fully recovered from repeated torture. Finally, after about a hundred meters of silence, I asked, Who didnt make it out?
Oh, thats easy, he said. The optimists.
The optimists? I dont understand, I said, now completely confused, given what hed said a hundred meters earlier.
The optimists. Oh, they were the ones who said, Were going to be out by Christmas. And Christmas would come, and Christmas would go. Then theyd say, Were going to be out by Easter. And Easter would come, and Easter would go. And then Thanksgiving, and then it would be Christmas again. And they died of a broken heart.
Another long pause, and more walking. Then he turned to me and said, This is a very important lesson. You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the endwhich you can never afford to losewith the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.
To this day, I carry a mental image of Stockdale admonishing the optimists: Were not getting out by Christmas; deal with it!

Amazing, huh?

I don’t think I’ll soon forget the story of Admiral Stockdale. I hope you were able to glean some insights from this story as I have. And, in case you want to listen to the audio of Jim Collins talking about this story, you can find that here.