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“Most people assume the following formula: If you work hard, you will become successful, and once you become successful, then you’ll be happy. Success first, happiness second. The only problem is that this formula is broken. The formula is broken because it is backward. More than a decade of groundbreaking research in the fields of positive psychology and neuroscience has proven in no uncertain terms that the relationship between success and happiness works the other way around. Happiness and optimism actually fuel performance and achievement.”

-Shawn Achor (TED talk, via Corporate Rebels)

“I’ve learned that I enjoy human beings more if I don’t hear what they think. […] I’ve learned to savor life much more by only hearing what’s going on in their hearts and not getting caught up with the stuff in their heads. [When I focus on their] feelings and needs, I see the universality of our experience.”

-Marshall Rosenberg, Nonviolent Communication (p. 151)

“All violence is the result of people tricking themselves into believing that their pain derives from other people and that consequently those people deserve to be punished.”

-Marshall Rosenberg, Nonviolent Communication (p. 147)

Marshall Rosenberg (Nonviolent Communication, p. 16):

Long before I reached adulthood, I learned to communicate in an impersonal way that did not require me to reveal what was going on inside myself. When I encountered people or behaviors I either didn’t like or didn’t understand, I would react in terms of their wrongness. If my teachers assigned a task I didn’t want to do, they were “mean” or “unreasonable.” If someone pulled out in front of me in traffic, my reaction would be, “You idiot!” When we speak this language, we think and communicate in terms of what’s wrong with others for behaving in certain ways or, occasionally, what’s wrong with ourselves for not understanding or responding as we would like. Our attention is focused on classifying, analyzing, and determining levels of wrongness rather than on what we and others need and are not getting. Thus […] if my colleague is more concerned about details than I am, he is “picky and compulsive.” On the other hand, if I am more concerned about details than he is, he is “sloppy and disorganized.”

It is my belief that all such analyses of other human beings are tragic expressions of our own values and needs. They are tragic because when we express our values and needs in this form, we increase defensiveness and resistance among the very people whose behaviors are of concern to us. Or, if people do agree to act in harmony with our values, they will likely do so out of fear, guilt, or shame because they concur with our analysis of their wrongness.

For me, the most difficult part in learning to communicate nonviolently has been unlearning this widespread cultural practice of judging, classifying, and criticizing. I knew from my liberal arts background that there are two sides to any argument. But I did not really understand how taking a side, no matter which one, leads to violence and alienation. And I did not understand the depth of the notion that all judgement is self-judgement. (By far the greatest casualty in my past taking of sides was myself, as I heaped blame and judgement on what I saw as my own shortcomings.)

Note a crucial subtlety here: it does not follow that judging and criticizing are wrong. Such a statement would be a paradox, because wrongness is a form of judgement. Instead, I merely choose to avoid engaging in such activities as judging and criticizing, now that I see how they can lead to shame and violence. (Unfortunately, even that last sentence will imply judgement to anyone who is steeped in the prevailing culture of “should”.)

The subtitle of my blog used to be: “Because interesting thoughts deserve to be written down.” I’m now concerned that the word “deserve” implies rightness, which is a form of judgment. So I updated the subtitle accordingly: “Ideas I wanted to remember and share.”

When we think of user interfaces, we normally think of what’s provided to “end users” of software or devices. But programming languages are also user interfaces, because programmers are people. In this regard, textual programming has been the overwhelmingly dominant user interface for creating software.

We know that different user interface techniques are better and worse for different tasks. For example, text editing is an efficient user interface for writing email. Graphical drag-and-drop interfaces are efficient for creating graphics and illustration. Spreadsheets are efficient for calculating many rows of numbers.

It’s not at all clear that text editing is the best imaginable user interface for creating software. It may be optimal for some of the aspects or tasks that are involved in software creation, but probably not all or even most. For example, it’s relatively clumsy to design, debug, and iterate on graphical front-ends using a textual representation. That’s why Apple and others provide tools like Interface Builder to help with some of these tasks in a more visual way. But even more abstract tasks such as algorithm design may be significantly improved with visual tools for designing, debugging, iterating, and testing. Which specific user interface is most useful depends on the details and purpose of the component being built.

In traditional programming, each component has a purposefully-limited “application programming interface” (API) that defines what the component can do. To a programmer, a component’s application programming interface is also its user interface. That is, the tools that a component provides to a programmer consist of the component’s API plus any accompanying documentation (typically, all in text format).

What if such components — intended for software engineers — also came with purpose-built user interfaces? For example, a component that performs statistical computations could come with user interfaces for inputting data sets, tweaking parameters, and testing outputs. A networking component could come with user interfaces that simulate network performance over a range of conditions and help programmers choose appropriate settings. A component that provides a front-end widget such as a button or slider could provide convenient user interfaces so that engineers can easily customize the widget’s behavior and appearance.

Today’s software is built with one graphical interface for end users and many layers of textual programming below. The vision here is for an alternate programming environment that consists of arbitrary many layers of rich user interfaces — each interface intended for those who are using that component. Lower-level interfaces (e.g. memory allocation or signal processing) would be designed for engineers who are dealing with those layers; higher-level interfaces (e.g. graphics or widget libraries) would be designed for engineers dealing with those components; and finally, the top-most interface would be the traditional one that end users of the software product actually see and use.

What prevents this vision from unfolding? Perhaps the most significant factor is the difficulty and cost of building rich user interfaces. This is a chicken-and-egg problem: building rich user interfaces is hard, in part, because we are using text editors to do it! So the first steps forward would be slow and clumsy, as we start building richer components without good tools to do so. However, over time, as we use the tool to build the tool, we would expect to start receiving dividends. (This is analogous to how the C language was built by repeatedly compiling with earlier, less capable versions of C.)

Of course, there is also no guarantee that this richer programming system would actually make software more cost-effective, high quality, fun, or other desirable qualities. It’s easy to imagine that software engineers steeped in the current system may never be as efficient in a less text-heavy environment. Perhaps this whole idea has already been tried and failed.

Yet improving the user interface of each component clearly makes the whole system more humane. It provides an opportunity to augment the logical-verbal-dominated software engineering process with a fuller range of human visual, kinesthetic, social, and emotional skills. Who knows where that might lead?

(As I currently understand it.)

The universe exploded into being and some billions of years later the Sun and Earth formed. Through a series of highly improbable events, molecules coalesced into simple replicating life forms, which later coalesced into a mitochondria-powered cell and began to evolve in many directions. Asteroid impacts, global climate fluctuations, and the yearly and daily cycles of Earth influenced evolution by repeatedly creating and destroying ecological niches, thereby creating selective pressure for evolutionary inventiveness and adaptivity. The resulting inventiveness mechanisms such as DNA and sexual reproduction and the increasing competition between species colluded to speed up the evolution process exponentially over time.

Eventually, tool-building emerged as an inventiveness method that could evolve more rapidly than biological traits. Projectile weapons and fire were discovered as particularly effective tools for obtaining food energy. That extra energy made it possible to power much larger brains. Those brains were capable of keeping track of ever larger social networks so that ever larger groups could coordinate mutually beneficial activities such as large-game hunting and reciprocally helping others during times of scarcity. As humans exercised their skills in cooperation and creativity, they began to harness new forms of energy such as wind and oil and to tackle ever more complex activities such as industrial manufacturing and global trade.

As human communities reached billions of members, they began to grapple for the first time with the problems of excess rather than scarcity. The small planet’s climate and ecosystems began straining to support the ever-expanding human species. A few people held inordinate power over many. Obesity became a leading disease. Amid all this wealth, the continuing existence of poverty and inequality became increasingly uncomfortable. And those whose basic needs had now been met began to search for their purpose and calling in life.

Some found that the meaning in their lives was increasingly at odds with cultural habits that originated in times of scarcity, such as physical and emotional violence, race and gender stereotyping, and striving for career advancement. They began to believe that right and wrong are simplistic concepts and they began to practice new ways of living that are driven by the quest for authenticity and compassion rather than the avoidance of blame and judgement. Some of these practices, such as meditation, gratitude, and forgiveness, had ancient roots but experienced a resurgence as their efficacy was demonstrated separate from mythology and religion.

As more people engaged in such practices and collaborated with ever wider social circles via global information technologies, communities began to find new ways to tackle the extremely complex problems facing the human race. Using techniques such as self-management and a focus on deeper purpose, some organizations began to reach unprecedented levels of effectiveness and adaptivity, evolving in much the same way (but orders of magnitude faster) as tool technology and biological organisms evolved before them.

At that point, one such person engaged in some such pursuits read some books and decided that it might bring joy to write a blog post about it.

“One of the great dangers of transformational work is that the ego attempts to sidestep deep psychological work by leaping into the transcendent too soon. This is because the ego always fancies itself much more ‘advanced’ than it actually is. How many first-year novices have persuaded themselves that they are just about ready for sainthood? How many meditation students have been certain that they attained enlightenment in record-breaking time?”

-Riso & Hudson, The Wisdom of the Enneagram (p. 10)

I thought this was a nice way of organizing strengths relevant to leadership: Beyond “Dreamers vs Doers” — Full Circle Leadership

My strengths are firmly on the “visionary” side and I need collaborators who are strong in “operational” leadership.

I’m still processing many of the extraordinary findings discussed in Reinventing Organizations (Laloux 2014), but for now I want to address a single foundational topic that has come up repeatedly: assumptions about human nature. Are human beings fundamentally lazy, egocentric, and antagonistic, or are we fundamentally compassionate, self-motivated and trustworthy? As Laloux points out, “people can debate this topic endlessly.” There is plenty of evidence for both points of view — it’s easy to find examples of both bitter conflicts and inspiring selflessness, shattered trust and stalwart dependability, stubborn resistance to change and pursuit of lofty dreams, and everything in-between. So which is true?

All of it! Specifically: People meet the expectations of their environment. This has been known scientifically for decades and validated repeatedly. “This comes down to the fundamental spiritual truth that we reap what we sow… If you view people with mistrust and subject them to all sorts of controls, rules, and punishments, they will try to game the system, and you will feel your thinking is validated. Meet people with practices based on trust, and they will return your trust with responsible behavior. Again, you will feel your assumptions were validated.” (Laloux, chapter 2.3) Once you understand the essential flexibility of human nature, you can avoid the fate of getting stuck in one camp or the other, debating endlessly, unable to get out or lead others out.

The idea of self-management is a direct corollary of the fact that all humans are trustworthy, intelligent, and responsible, but only if we treat them that way. Conversely, the idea behind traditional management is that employees need to be directed and protected. No matter how much “empowerment” you try to inject into the system, employees operating in a power hierarchy will act as if they need to be directed and protected. The only known way to fully unleash the creative, intelligent, and trustworthy potential of humans is to practice some form of self-management.

There are many reasons why self-management is attractive, and Reinventing Organizations discusses all of these in depth. But to me, the chain of reasoning above is the most compelling. It underlies my belief that self-management is not a radical idea at all. It’s surprising at first — but seems obvious in retrospect.

I have a theory about why Apple continues to spook investors.

The spooking itself is well established. Apple stock is remarkably volatile for a company that is so large and has been growing and profiting so consistently. One commonly-cited reason is that Apple’s revenue has generally been dominated by a single product or product line: first the Mac, then iPods, and now iPhones make up the majority of their revenue (for example, in the latest quarter, 68% of total revenue came from iPhone sales). The thinking goes that individual products can swing wildly in popularity. So any time a potential threat to iPhone sales emerges, Apple stock plunges (the same pattern occurred in the past around threats to iPods and Macs). Many other reasons for volatility are also cited, including the fact that Apple almost went bankrupt twenty years ago, and the general unpredictability of rapidly evolving technology markets.

Despite all this, Apple has actually been remarkably resilient since Steve Jobs returned in the late 1990’s. Customers upgrade their devices regularly and they rarely switch away from Apple. iPod sales eventually declined — because customers were buying iPhones instead. Horace Dediu has proposed that instead of focusing on the current product lineup, it makes far more sense to value Apple based on the ongoing revenue streams from its loyal customers, who each spend roughly $1 per day per product line. In this model, iPhones and Macs can (and probably will) disappear eventually, but those sales will be replaced by new product lines that Apple will have introduced by then. This model pegs Apple’s valuation far higher than the current stock price does.

But investors are smart people. They can see for themselves Apple’s customer loyalty and history of resilience in modern times. So why do they continue to be spooked?

I think one clue to the puzzle can be found in the striking disconnect between the way most journalists and analysts describe Apple, versus the way Apple describes itself. The outside narrative tends to focus on competitive opportunities and threats. For example, a recent MacRumors story about a new display technology notes: “Apple is apparently looking to quickly switch to OLED displays to [boost] iPhone sales, which analysts expect to stall.” The unspoken assumption behind this type of statement is that Apple’s goal is to boost sales — that strategic decisions tend to be made in service of “the bottom line”.

In contrast, when Apple executives are interviewed, they consistently say that Apple’s goal is not to hit any particular revenue target but rather to make the best products they possibly can. “Competitors help us improve” and “we are far more interested in customer satisfaction than market share.” The famous Steve Jobs quote is: “We’re here to put a dent in the universe.” The rhetoric from Apple executives is so consistent and unified that 60 Minutes reporters actually asked them directly if this was some sort of hype or marketing strategy. “No,” the executives replied, “this is really how it works around here.”

You can either believe Apple, or you can believe the mainstream cynicism. It’s easy to assume that Apple is no different from the rest, especially given the extraordinary amount of money they’ve made. But from all the evidence I’ve gathered as an Apple watcher over the last decade, I believe that their focus on purpose is sincere, and indeed is the cause of their consistent profitability (in what appears to be a paradox). In fact, this focus on “purpose, not profits” is one of the three pillars of radically progressive companies described in Reinventing Organizations (Laloux 2014). (The other two pillars are “wholeness” and “self-management”, which Apple currently does not score as highly on.)

The notion that a company is not trying to maximize profits would seem to be, by itself, enough to spook investors who are trying to maximize their returns. But you never see this given as a reason to dump Apple shares. Rather, the idea that profitability is not the goal is still so countercultural in business and investing today that it is apparently easier to believe that Apple is basically doing the same thing as other companies but is engaged in an elaborate marketing hoax about “thinking different” and making “the best products in the world.” Analysts can never quite figure out why this hoax continues to “fool” so many consumers into buying expensive iDevices. The whole thing feels like a house of cards that could tumble at any moment when a competitor introduces a low-cost product with similar specs. The recent history of resilience feels like a string of luck.

Once you come to understand the power of “purpose, not profits”, you realize that it’s not a reason to be spooked at all — quite the contrary, it’s the most essential ingredient in Apple’s success. But to accept that, you must abandon what might be deeply held beliefs about survival, competition, power, productivity, and the nature of success. These beliefs are often personal — what if you have been striving after profits your whole life, and the whole endeavor was fundamentally misguided? These are not ideas that you overturn just because an Apple executive told you so — indeed, mistrusting people, particularly those in power, is part of the old belief system. (See Reinventing Organizations for more on this.)

In other words, understanding Apple does not merely require an analysis of strategy or operations. It requires a worldview change. It requires a reassessment of basic assumptions about how all organizations function and disfunction.

It’s been clear for a long time that investors misunderstand Apple. Only recently am I starting to understand just how deeply the disconnect goes.